Okay, can we take a moment to giggle at that stock photo? Because I always get frustrated when I’m writing with a fountain pen and my white, lacy sleeve gets caught in the spiral binder of  my notebook…

But anyway.

Three years ago, right around this time, I had a television crew following me around for a week. Seriously.

One of my good friends nominated me for a surprise makeover show, and they ambushed me. I spent a week with a wardrobe consultant (oh, I needed that), a personal workout coach (I needed that but hated that) and a life coach as well. The life coach was a little ethereal for me -a  very yoga and zen and vegan and mediation sort of a girl. I can respect her commitment to that, but not relate to it much.

I didn’t take too much away that was applicable to my life from our sessions, save for one thing. When I told her I had a good half-dozen half-finished books lying around and I really, really wanted to be a published author, she shook her head and said, “Then you’ve got to find a way to do it. Make the time. Stop doing some of these other things and focus until you get your book done. It’s going to take discipline, but you need to do it or you’ll always be wishing you did.”

Discipline and focus. She was absolutely right. So I pushed some things aside, and I simplified my life where I could and I stopped spending so much time mindlessly surfing the internet and I started outlining and really, really writing.

When I wrote “The End” for the first time, it was amazing. And when my Editor told me half a year ago that I really nailed it on the final version of “Traveler,” I cannot tell you the amount of self-satisfaction that gave me. And last week, I closed out the latest version of Dreamer (which needed and extensive overhaul, let me tell you) and Oooooh. Feels so good. So damn good.

You can dream and sort of write, or you can dream, write, edit, write some more, revise, let someone else read your revision, edit again, and be finally, finally done. All because you showed some discipline and focus.

Creativity gets you going. Discipline gets it done. A lesson from me and my moonbeam lifecoach to you. Guess I owe her some vegan brownies.