Paul Worthington, who describes himself as a "long time reader/first time correspondent" writes to ask…
As you have often noted in your writing posts, a key requirement for career success is simply doing the hard work. As many other writers I follow say, it's putting your butt in the chair, and writing every day.
My question: How do you build up this self-discipline? It seems you've always had it. Is that the case?
I have been lucky to have a successful journalism career, but it was based on innate talent (which I was gifted with, not that I earned or deserve) much more than regular hard work. Now I am attempting to write novels, and that simply requires much more regular effort than I've ever maintained for a long time.
It's something of a chicken/egg quandary: These days it's become business/career conventional wisdom to point out that the key to success is grit. Determination. Follow-through. Self-discipline. But it seems to me, an admittedly lazy coaster, that if you don't innately have grit, you can't simply develop it — because the discipline to develop it requires grit in the first place!
I'm not the guy to answer this, Paul, because I came to my career from the opposite direction. I became a writer because I loved writing. Even when I had no audience and no glimmerings of a paycheck, I had zero problem putting my smaller-than-it-is-now butt in the chair and writing every day. I have always looked askance at the Dorothy Parker quote, "I hate writing but I love having written." I always think, "If you hate writing, you'd be nuts to choose that for your life's work."
So no, I didn't have to build up much self-discipline. There are occasionally times when I don't like what I have to write — or don't like having to write it in the limited time I have before the absolute deadline — but those are small problems. And to me, the key to dealing with a small problem is to treat it as small problem and not over-dramatize it into a big one. (When friends come to me for help with what they think are Big Problems, my first advice is usually to tell them that what they have is a Small Problem and shouldn't treat it as anything more than that.)
Basically, writing comes down to this: Do the job or don't do the job. Just don't decide to do the job and then complain about having to do the job. No, it's not always easy. It's not supposed to always be easy. Neither are most things in life that you may decide are worth doing.