Change Is One Decision Away--If You Practice

As I've written before: If I want to be a writer, I just have to be a writer. I don't have to do anything. If I want to do writing, I have to be a writer, and then start writing. If I want to have written something, then I have to be a writer, do the writing, and then keep at it until the piece is done.


The start of any change--to be something different, to do something different, or to have something different is just one decision away. Making decisions is not hard. If I'm not writing, and I want to write or to have written something (wanting is not the same as deciding) then the change will start when I decide to be a writer. Many times that's enough. I declare (once again) I am a writer.  The decision results--almost magically--in me starting to write. And after a while I will have written something.

If deciding to "be a writer" doesn't do it, and I still want to have written something, then the next change is just one more decision away: to decide to write now. Not time in the future. But now.

The decision has to have a now in it because decisions have an expiration date. They are ephemeral. My decisions to be a writer and to write are effective only as long as I am on my way to writing (that is, walking up to my office, or pulling out a notebook,) or actually writing, or doing something while maintaining the deliberate intention to write about it later (doing it as a writer, rather than just doing it). Once I stop re-deciding or re-creating that decision, I go back to whatever state of being my environment seems to demand of me at the time--or if no demands then to just drifting.

Decisions produce change. A decision may start a visible change (a decision to act), or it may cause an invisible change that flows naturally into action (a decision to be).  Absent decision things may happen but nothing really changes.

Making a decision is a skill. And keeping a decision in place is a skill. As with all other skills, if you don't deliberately practice you won't be very good.  If you do practice, and do your practice deliberately, then after enough good practice, you will get good.

That's the goal of all practice: to be able to carry out an act without thinking about it. I've become strong at deciding to do my daily pages per The Artist's Way. Nearly every morning I decide "it's time to do my pages." The decision is effortless. The doing is nearly effortless. And I've got a stack of notebooks to prove it. What's in them? Who cares. The goal of doing pages is just to have done  them. And I've done them. For more than three years.

But my other writing is sporadic. I think it's because I make the necessary decisions in a weak and undisciplined way, when I remember to do them at all. Here's what I do most often: not decide. Here's what I do second most often: I decide to write something (later), and later never comes. Here's what I think I should do:

• Remember to decide to be a writer
• Decide to be a writer
• Decide to write
• Write
• Keep those decisions fresh until the writing is done

As I am doing right now.

Periodically I realize that I am letting circumstances and inertia make decisions for me and I decide to . When I realize that I'm drifting, and I decide to change.  I need a periodic reminder: "Decide!"

Then I need to practice making the decisions I want to make more decisions become as effortless as my decision to do my pages.

Such a decision has gotten this blog post started, and now finished. 

Now, let me decide what to do next!