Discipline is a tricky word for artists. It is for me, at least. As a noun, there’s the larger, inclusive meaning: a branch of knowledge and there’s also the practice of training oneself or another to obey rules. Sometimes a method of correction for disobedience is understood as part of the definition. As a verb, it means to train oneself or another. For a writer, discipline can mean sticking to one project until it’s completed or focusing entirely on one genre. This approach offers a continuing and deepening understanding of the way we want to express ourselves and can continue to narrow, so that writing becomes exclusively poetry which becomes only sonnets. There is merit to immersing oneself in this way. We live inside a form and the world is transformed and understood within the guidance of this sensibility. But there is a limitation as well. What if what we want to say is not best suited to the form we have chosen? Or it has been imposed upon us through work or culture? Inside this dilemma can live the seeds of writer’s block. Human nature likes resistance, and it likes an escape hatch. It also likes variety as the cliché says. When inspired to write, the form often finds its voice along with what is being said. How do we know if a piece of writing is best suited to a sestina, flash fiction, or a scene in a novel? If we choose the form first, does the meaning bend to fit the structure? These are questions that writers ask before, during and after they write. If applying strict discipline, the parameters are set and creativity partners with logic. A powerful duo. But there is also an argument to be made for letting ourselves wander into our writing, finding what wants to be written and following it. Much like a dog detecting enticing scents full of important information about what else is out there in the wild woods. Being let loose is a wonderful cure for being stymied in a project. The joy of writing anything that comes can actually help develop and finish the Big Project rather than create a diversion from it. The cross pollination of poetry and prose is also fertile ground for developing both disciplines. How many incredibly poetic lines have you discovered in a novel? How many vivid scenes have played out before you as you read a poem? The fabulous thing about art is that there are no real borders between genres, and letting ourselves write through those filmy scrims is exciting. Of course there comes a time when the chapbook or the novel needs to be made presentable for an audience of more than one. Then discipline and focus are the right companions. At the outset, and for a goodly length of any creative endeavor, letting the mind meander enriches expression. For me, it’s much like when I was a kid. I had school clothes and play clothes. I liked them both and knew what each meant. In play clothes I explored and discovered what I chose. In school clothes I attended to and learned what was expected of me. Off leash or tight reins. Each serves the writer when we allow ourselves the freedom to choose.
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Release Date: May 6, 2021: Maud & Addie, a middle-grade novel. In 1910, sisters, Addie and Maud Campbell are swept out to sea off the coast of Nova Scotia. With a half-filled picnic hamper, a carriage blanket and their wits, they survive the North Atlantic and landfall on a deserted island. As castaways, they draw on resilience, courage, and inventiveness to become closer and more their individual selves.
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