The Blogging Muse Requires Discipline

Every once in a while I check in on the primo blogger, Wil Wheaton, one of the few bloggers more prolific than me. I loved his recent post, Inspire In Me The Desire In Me”:

When I’m working on a project that takes more than one session to complete, I need to write at the same time of day, in the same place, with the same music. I don’t know why, but it kicks something in my brains into motion and the creative part of it rolls out of bed and starts running…

…I don’t understand the significance of these individual bits, but they all go together to make up one very important writing ritual that helps me work every day.

Which leads me to another thing I mentioned to Ryan’s class: the importance of discipline and schedule, especially if you’re freelance or self-published. If I don’t give myself actual deadlines and make them, I’ll never get anything done. If I don’t set aside some chunk of time every day (for me it’s from nine in the morning until 2:30 in the afternoon) that’s just for writing, I’ll never be disciplined enough to get things done.

Writing is work. It’s a job. Especially if you blog for money. Then it is real work. Thus, you must show up on time and stay for the duration of your scheduled work time.

Blogging and writing takes disciplined. Stephen King says, “My muse may visit. She may not. The trick is to be there waiting if she does.”

If you aren’t in the right place for your appointment with your muse, nothing gets done and you’ve lost the chance for an idea, concept, and the wonderful opportunity to turn a thought into published words.

And what if your muse isn’t there?

I don’t wait for my muse to wander by, I go out and drag her home by the hair.
Rise Sheriden-Peters

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.