Are you better or worse for writing?

butterfly · Nov 27, 2012

These responses are great and reveal truth and that's a good thing.

shadowwalker said:
It's made me a little less disciplined in some areas - I no longer worry as much about housekeeping, etc. Of course, that may be a product of no longer having youngsters in the house.

I have become more self-confident. I call bullshit far more often than I used to, which I think comes from having characters who believe in things I don't. That's made me look at things from a more objective POV overall.

I get the not worrying about housekeeping and mine are over 20 and still at home. I just don't take it serious anymore. I don't take bs anymore either but it might be my age.

Jamesaritchie said:
Why does everyone assume writing takes discipline? Writing takes no more self-discipline for me than playing a game I love, or sitting on the beach with a margarita and watching the surf roll in.

Sitting on the beach with a margarita would take serious discipline on my part. I'm neither a drinker nor a sitter.

Self-discipline is important in life, but should be reserved for doing things you don't want to do, but must do for one reason or another. Darned if I'd want to spend most of my time doing anything that required self-discipline. I write because I love writing. It's the way I want to spend that part of my day.

Things I have to do I do without thinking. They just have to be done. For me now those things are rhythmic and less of a chore.

So, no, writing has not made me any more disciplined in the rest of my life.

Changed my opinion of myself how? Writing isn't the Nobel Peace Prize, or risking your life saving a drowning child, or anything else special. It's just sitting down and making stuff up, and no more special than any other activity. Less special than many.

I disagree. It is special, very special. And completely different from saving a life IRL.

quickWit said:
I for one am way more awesome since I started writing.

Excellent!

ladylilchubb said:
Not really, because I'm an pretty undisciplined writer. So I'm still working on that. (Now that I think about it, I don't know one area of my life that's disciplined. Not since college basketball and schoolwork ended, anyway.) But my writing hasn't really changed my opinion of myself, because I've never thought I = my work. Beyond making me realize I can come up with some really twisted stuff, I'm the same before writing as after.

But don't you think we do, to a degree? Unless you have your own business or are madly in love with your job, your writing reflects you and if you write twisted stuff you must be learning about your feelings towards that.[/QUOTE]

Perks said:

More disciplined? Sadly, no. But I'm more reverent, irreverent, happy, sad, excited, bored, clearer, and more confused than ever.

It's better than reincarnation, because I get to have multiple, overlapping lives.

Love this!

Click to expand...

rwm4768 · Nov 27, 2012

I think writing has definitely helped me to become more disciplined. For the longest time, I never liked committing to any lengthy projects because I didn't have the confidence that I could do it. Then I finished my first novel by the deadline I intended. The novel sucked, but I still finished it.

That success led me to take up new interests like acting and ultimately made me believe I could go away to college and survive.

DancingMaenid · Nov 27, 2012

I'm not sure I can say that writing has made me more disciplined, because there are times when it's hard for me to put writing aside in order to focus on other things. There have been times when I made working on a story my main priority when it probably shouldn't have been. Also, I'm a really undisciplined writer.

Though, right now I'm putting my stories on the back burner to focus on studying for finals and writing papers, and that takes some discipline. So I guess in a roundabout way, writing helps create situations where I can learn discipline.

I don't think I'd say that writing has changed my view of myself much. Like a few others have said, writing has never really been therapy for me. But I think writing has given me some interesting perspective of my tastes and what appeals to me. There are definitely topics and relationship dynamics that I gravitate toward writing about, and it's interesting to notice that.

muravyets · Nov 27, 2012

I am not more disciplined because of writing. Not directly. I am more disciplined because I love writing and making art, and that love elevates my hatred for holding down a day job, and that hatred drives me to be more disciplined with my time and money so I can quit day jobs frequently and write and make art more freely. So one can say that I have developed discipline because of creative work, but not necessarily that the creative work made me more disciplined.

Because I'm a hellishly undisciplined writer and artist. I'm just rigorously disciplined in unemployment.

As for other changes, writing and artistic pursuits have probably changed me from a worker with a promising career path before her to a really terrible employee due to my seething resentment of any job that is not writing or art and the fact that I suspect the resentment starts to show after a while.

Writing has not changed my view of myself, but I have learned that it is one of the cornerstones to happiness in my life.

blacbird · Nov 28, 2012

To the two questions, respectively;

No.

Yes.

Neither for the better.

caw

Becky Black · Nov 28, 2012

It's made me more organised, as I decided to be so. I wanted to be able to have my mind focused on writing and not what I had to go buy at the supermarket, or that I had to remember to do laundry later. So I let my to do lists and calendar remember all that boring stuff and just remind me to do it, while I concentrate on important stuff.

Also for the first few years, writing and losing weight went together. I first started on a low carb diet around the same time as I started writing. Astonishingly to me, both worked. I stayed on the diet and lost weight. People liked the stuff I was writing. Succeeding at one encouraged me to believe in myself that I could succeed at the other - and vice versa. It was like a cycle of mutual reinforcement, thinking if I can do A I can do B and if I can do B I can do A. My confidence rocketed during that time.

Of course writing hasn't changed my poor aching back for the better, or my social life - but some sacrifices are worth it.

Buffysquirrel · Nov 28, 2012

Jamesaritchie said:
Why does everyone assume writing takes discipline? Writing takes no more self-discipline for me than playing a game I love, or sitting on the beach with a margarita and watching the surf roll in.

Some of us base it on our own experiences, which are (gasp! shock!) different from yours.

Ken · Nov 28, 2012

butterfly said:
Does the act of writing make you a more disciplined person in other areas of your life?

Has it changed your opinion of yourself?

Just curious.

... varies from day to day. If my writing seems like it's going nowhere, but a disappointing stream of rejections, then it makes me feel like garbage. If things are going well, on rare occasion, and there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel then writing makes me feel good, even though I'm saying to myself all the while, "Don't be a danged fool, Ken!"

ps Good question BTW.

LJD · Nov 28, 2012

backslashbaby said:
I'm not more disciplined because of writing fiction. My discipline from school in general is the only reason I'm disciplined at all in fiction.

Yeah, this.

Sometimes I think I'd be more content with my life as it is if I didn't write. Or maybe I'd be less able to cope with it, though it's kind of hard to believe I could be any worse at coping. I'm not sure.

August Talok · Nov 28, 2012

Without a doubt. It has made me a better person. I learned to take criticism. I learned discipline. I even learned to be less critical of other writers - now knowing how the grind can be.

ishtar'sgate · Nov 28, 2012

Jamesaritchie said:
Why does everyone assume writing takes discipline? Writing takes no more self-discipline for me than playing a game I love, or sitting on the beach with a margarita and watching the surf roll in.

Yeah, well, you're pretty lucky there I think. You also don't need to revise if my memory serves me correctly, 'cause you get it right the first time.

I take comfort in the fact that Agatha Christie once said that after she got a good idea she had to force herself to write. If she had to force herself then if I have to do the same at times I'm in great company.

ladyleeona · Nov 28, 2012

butterfly said:
But don't you think we do, to a degree? Unless you have your own business or are madly in love with your job, your writing reflects you and if you write twisted stuff you must be learning about your feelings towards that

Not particulary, though I'm sure there are others with opinions that wildly differ from mine. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems you're saying that unless one is deliriously happy, everything they write is actually their own personal commentary?

I don't think discontent is the only way certain scenes or books get written. In fact, I feel like that assumption (true as it may be for some individuals) is what created the All Writers Are Antisocial Depressed Drunkards (etc.), stereotype. So no, I don't feel that way at all. I've just got an active imagination and absorb inspiration like a sponge. I am not my work.

LadyV · Nov 28, 2012

Am I more disciplined? Not really. I'm still the inconsistent procrastinator I've always been. However, I am still working on one project despite wanting desperately to work on another because I wish to see it to the end, even if it takes a few years. So maybe because I'm writing I'm more committed but definitely not disciplined.

Has it changed me? Slightly. I can pick out mistakes or good sentence structure more easily now, but I've always been a daydreamer. The only thing that's changed is that I decided to put the stories in my head down on paper.

muravyets · Nov 28, 2012

ladylilchubb said:
Not particulary, though I'm sure there are others with opinions that wildly differ from mine. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems you're saying that unless one is deliriously happy, everything they write is actually their own personal commentary?

I don't think discontent is the only way certain scenes or books get written. In fact, I feel like that assumption (true as it may be for some individuals) is what created the All Writers Are Antisocial Depressed Drunkards (etc.), stereotype. So no, I don't feel that way at all. I've just got an active imagination and absorb inspiration like a sponge. I am not my work.

Hear hear. I write supernatural horror-thriller-chiller tales. I don't have morbid obsessions or phobias, and I don't have issues with my feelings about twisted stuff. In fact, I am so not learning about my feelings on that score that I don't know if my stuff is scary at all until I have someone else read it for me. To me, none of it is dark or twisted, no matter what the content. I want my stories to be scary, but from my own point of view, they're just stories about people told with a particular style. I don't know if they're scary until I run human tests.

I think a lot of what creates that stereotype of the self-destructive writer is that people tend to forget that concepts like "twisted" are subjective. What is twisted to one person might be completely ordinary to another, or what is disturbing in one context is neutral or even healthy in other contexts.

It reminds me of a collage I exhibited once that featured vintage images of cyclists racing around giant type blocks of M and G, surrounded by flowers and butterflies. To me it was an energetic, commercial-looking image suggestive of a bicycle race in the spring. A woman who burst into tears while looking at it, apparently saw it differently. She asked me if it was a Nazi symbol.

Or how about that political idiot a few years ago -- I've thankfully forgotten who it was -- who thought the Teletubbies were gay propaganda because one of them carried a purse?

Or the time my friend, whose mind is one of my favorites, saw Angel Hello Kitty for the first time in a card shop and exclaimed, "Oh my god, when did Hello Kitty die?"

Yes, there are writers who use their art and craft to work through their personal issues. But there are also writers who are not writing about themselves. Personally, I suspect there are a lot more of the latter than the former.

NicolaD · Nov 28, 2012

More disciplined: Lol, I wish!
Has it changed me: Definitely. Although I've lived like a pauper for the past 2.5 years, leaving my high paying, high stress job was the best decision I ever made. Sure, I've had plenty of WTF wahhhhhhh days, but jinkies I've had some highs - first comp final, first win, first request, first offer etc - where the joy was so intense, so ridiculously cool it just cancelled out anything else (even hunger pangs.) This is how I know that despite the crap, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. (Alongside the pleasure of spending time with other writers at places like this. Man, I still remember the first writers meeting I attended, I went home and bawled afterwards. People who had all sorts of stuff going on in their head! Who talked to themselves when out walking! Who knew what it felt like to be on the rollercoaster! Who considered trackies, chocolate and caffeine to be essential items! Who enjoyed meeting up with friends but were equally comfortable not seeing anyone all day! Like finally I'd stumbled out of the spaceship and back onto my home planet.)

Sunflowerrei · Nov 28, 2012

More disciplined? Writing hasn't made me more disciplined in the least. I'm disciplined about some things and a total careless mess in other aspects. I'm more disciplined than I used to be about writing, but that's come with age, experience and more mature ideas, wanting to see my stories through rather than abandoning them when something didn't work.

Am I better or worse for writing? Can't answer that. I've been writing since I was a child, so I don't really remember a time when I wasn't writing.

butterfly · Nov 29, 2012

I don't feel that what we write or our job, friends, parents, environment, or lifestyle defines us as feelings, emotions, beliefs are fluid - we don't root in one state of mind or belief from one hour, one displaced comment, or one experience to the next.

Ten years ago I may not have written about death or snubbed out a character because I avoided that subject and wrote childrens stories where unkind things did happen but most of life was balanced, safe, and nurturing. Now that time has gone by and the Cinderella bubble has popped exposing mortality, death is prominent in most of what I write about because that is where we are headed.

As far as personal commentary not so much, just in character development certain things I may be uncomfortable with are easily exposed and there is no threat to my self by expressing these actions through fiction.

I also think fear, discontent, frustration, and angst make for truth in writing when you can accept yourself for who you are and not resign to whom others think you should be. Sacrifice shouldn't be made to accommodate others, only to help yourself grow into who you are meant to become and that may involve banishing others from your life. Difficult, but possible.

ladylilchubb said:
Not particulary, though I'm sure there are others with opinions that wildly differ from mine. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems you're saying that unless one is deliriously happy, everything they write is actually their own personal commentary?

I don't think discontent is the only way certain scenes or books get written. In fact, I feel like that assumption (true as it may be for some individuals) is what created the All Writers Are Antisocial Depressed Drunkards (etc.), stereotype. So no, I don't feel that way at all. I've just got an active imagination and absorb inspiration like a sponge. I am not my work.

JustJas · Nov 29, 2012

I've got to be honest and say I'm probably worse off since I started writing. I spend so much time in my head thinking about stories that I find it very hard to live in the moment. I'm more forgetful, unfocussed and unambitious in my non-writing career. My health has suffered because I spend a lot my time in front of my computer.. Another unexpected downside is that I've become much more critical when I'm reading other people's books and don't enjoy it as mucha as I used to because I see plot holes, bad dialogue etc

On saying all this, would I give it up? Never!

GinnieHazel · Nov 29, 2012

I don't think what I put down on paper can define me and I didn't take up writing as therapy but it's definitely helped me.

I have suffered from severe depression for almost all of my life, as well as being dyslexic and high functioning autistic, and my writing has helped me in ways I never would have anticipated.

My journalling helps me with my depression because I can use it to get everything out of cognitive behavioural therapy and talking cures that I was getting from one hour a week with a professional and lets me get it all out so that I can work through the emotion and think about it rationally. My fiction shows me that I can create and complete projects if I find a way of working that fits and I put the work in.

Writing has helped me take notice of the world around me. I take note of all the little details, the birds in the trees and the interesting architecture of the old city I live in, because I've learned that it's the little things that make a story so I look out for them.

It's helped my social skills and social life. I have something to talk to people about and I can search out groups where writing is a common interest, like in writing groups, on forums and in write-ins for NaNoWriMo. It's also given me a reason to go out of my way to talk to people I don't know and haven't been introduced to, something I would have never done before.

Writing is good for my dyslexia because it get's me using words and practising with them. My spelling has gotten so much better just from correcting my own work again and again. I still make mistakes but I don't let them make me stop any more.

Lastly, it's helped my autism by helping improve my theory of mind. Part of that is recognising that everyone has depths and dreams and things you can't see, and that's what you have to think about when creating characters. Even when you know all about them, maybe a tenth of that will go into a book.

Sorry if I've gone on a bit. This is something I'm passionate about.

backslashbaby · Nov 29, 2012

GinnieHazel, I do notice more wonderful things because of creative writing, absolutely!

I've just done that so long because of writing that I'd forgotten it

It's wonderful. I also look at folks as fuller people, if that makes sense. I wonder about their life, what they are like in other situations, etc. When I people-watch, I think about the people in much more depth than I do shopping with a migraine

If I didn't write, I don't know that I'd take such a deep look at the world around me. OTOH, it's kind of chicken-and-egg with me. It may be why I began putting those things down in the first place. I like the way stories look at the world and people.

Ton Lew Lepsnaci · Nov 29, 2012

Writing boosted my creativity, which spilled into my day job. Rather than taking away from it, writing added to my productivity. I gained lots of writer friends. I love exploring new avenues. Writing is one of them. I'm fascinated with the "rules' and reread favorites with new eyes. Yep, it's been good

Norman D Gutter · Nov 29, 2012

I don't know if I'm better or worse, but for sure I'm different.

elindsen · Dec 1, 2012

Writing has changed me for the better. I was diagnosed and cutting every day. Writing helped me keep my focus on something else. Now when I write, I tend to be more chipper.

Beatlemaniac · Dec 1, 2012

Becky Black said:
It's made me more organised, as I decided to be so. I wanted to be able to have my mind focused on writing and not what I had to go buy at the supermarket, or that I had to remember to do laundry later. So I let my to do lists and calendar remember all that boring stuff and just remind me to do it, while I concentrate on important stuff.

Also for the first few years, writing and losing weight went together. I first started on a low carb diet around the same time as I started writing. Astonishingly to me, both worked. I stayed on the diet and lost weight. People liked the stuff I was writing. Succeeding at one encouraged me to believe in myself that I could succeed at the other - and vice versa. It was like a cycle of mutual reinforcement, thinking if I can do A I can do B and if I can do B I can do A. My confidence rocketed during that time.

Of course writing hasn't changed my poor aching back for the better, or my social life - but some sacrifices are worth it.

I can so relate. I was always coming up with ideas and never completing them when I wrote--I'd always give up. That changed when I forced myself to finish my first novel. And I did--my attitude was completely different afterward. Instead of always feeling like a failure, I felt invincible (not in a going out and doing something reckless sort of way, but yes, I was proud of myself).

Did I sell the book? No, I didn't. But that didn't matter to me (I have since reworked it and will concentrate on selling it later). It was the fact I had the discipline to see it through.

That and also shedding 100 pounds after being obese since my teens. Those two occurrences have changed me--for the better.

However, I still think I'm a mess of a human being most of the time. LOL

heichan · Dec 2, 2012

butterfly said:
Does the act of writing make you a more disciplined person in other areas of your life?

Has it changed your opinion of yourself?

Just curious.

No. I'm not more disciplined because as I have started to write I've let other areas of my life slide. I've gained weight and I'm still struggling to find a healthy balance.

That said, I am more satisfied with myself because I've written a book. Though it hasn't been published it's still far more than the people around me have achieved so it impresses them and boosts my confidence. I set out to write a particular story and I did it. I'm proud of it and that's no small thing.

Are you better or worse for writing?

practical experience, FTW

New kid...seven years ago!

Old revolutionary

Writing my way off the B Ark

Don't Eat the Grot!

living in the past

fluently sarcastic grandma offender

Tree Hugger

Old revolutionary

This will all make sense tomorrow

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