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Mark David Gerson
a book bubble about
The Voice of the Muse
Self-Help
Author Insight
A New Kind of Discipline
The Oxford English Dictionary defines discipline as "the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience." And most books, workshops and teachers seem to subscribe to that definition, insisting that the only way to get a book or screenplay finished is by adopting an ironclad, “butt-in-the-chair” routine that churns out a certain number of words, pages or scenes per day, preferably at the same time period each day. If that works for you, great. It has never worked for me. To date, I have 17 published books and three optioned screenplays, and I have written all of them with the "heart discipline" I describe in the excerpt. It’s the same approach I encourage my clients to adopt when I work with them as their writing coach. Instead of insisting that they set ambitious goals, I urge them to set super-easy goals. You see, the easier your goals, the more likely you are to attain them, the better you will feel about yourself and about writing, and the more you will write. It’s a setup for success, not failure, and it’s all about “heart discipline.”
Book Excerpt
The Voice of the Muse
Mind discipline is rule-bound. It says, “You will write for 62.5 minutes every day and produce 1,488 words at each sitting, each sitting commencing at precisely eight minutes past nine o’clock in the morning.”
I exaggerate, of course. Yet much discipline is forced, rule-bound, punishing, joyless.
Heart discipline is different. It says that there is no optimal amount of time to spend at this or any writing session.
Heart discipline says, “Trust.”
Trust that when you sit down, whenever you sit down, your Muse will answer your invitation (for your Muse is always with you). Trust that all you hear, including that it is either time to write or time to stop, is true. Trust that all the words that flow through you, be they five or five thousand, are the correct and appropriate ones for the moments in which you hear and record them.
Listen with your heart and discern. Listen with your heart and you will know, through practice, when it is time to start and when it is time to stop. You will know which words will ultimately go and which will stay. Listen to your vision for your work and hew to that. That is your discipline. That is your calling.
Let discipline be your discipleship to that vision, to that calling. That is what it means to be a writer from the heart, a writer of truth. That is what it means to be authentic — as a human being and as a writer. That is what it means to answer the call of your heart, to open to the voice of your Muse.
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