Discipline

For a few months I’ve really wanted to write about this, but I’m glad I waited until now to do so. While I’ve aimed to do about one post per month, November was sidetracked until now because of competing in the NaNoWriMo event! After several long weeks, I was able to push out a very, very rough draft of a novel, just breaking the 50,000 word mark on the last day. It was quite the ride, and I’ve learned a lot, especially related to this topic of discipline.

Like almost everything I’ve brought up on this blog, to say that writers (and consequently roleplayers) require discipline seems like an obvious claim to make, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that the pieces really came together for me. I found myself looking at people I’d gotten the opportunity to roleplay with over the years, and I realized some of them were seemingly immune to the roleplaying cycle of disparity I described a while back—at the beginning of this year actually.

As I’ve said before, my goal in looking closely at roleplay isn’t, in fact, to simply be a heady elitist who think he knows best. My goal has really been to just solve that question that’s been bothering me most: why do people always seem to fluctuate in and out of roleplay, never able to maintain consistency and consequently never really get anywhere? For a good majority of this blog my key argument for striving for quality in roleplay has been because I believe that it facilitates roleplay that lasts longer. But I was looking at some of the people who I regard most highly in roleplay, and I noticed a connection between a number of them.

Among some of the strongest roleplayers I’ve met, besides simply having a good standard for their writing, I’ve noticed an undying amount of discipline in them, a couple of them going so far as to actually complete novels.

That really is quite the feat, and I commend anyone who’s accomplished it, because I would wager that perhaps every human who can read has, at one point in time, fantasized about writing a book. Perhaps roleplayers do it more than others, but the fact of the matter is it’s a very difficult thing to do. After all, if writing a book were easy, wouldn’t all of them have done it who wished to? The more I thought about this, the more it made sense.

Discipline is perhaps one of the most crucial things to roleplaying. While there are some people who quite literally are “so inspired” that they cannot help but write all the time, I feel hard-pressed to consider that a norm. For most of us, writing on a consistent basis is hard. The more you write—the more you do much of anything really—the more you’re probably going to realize how very not-good you are at it; this blog has taught me that more than once in and of itself. As you realize more and more that you are not as good as you once thought you were at something, the desire to continue can often diminish, and there are a hundred other reasons on top of that. Perhaps school or work gets busy, perhaps you go on vacation or maybe you get a girlfriend.

The point isn’t to say that “Roleplay is singlehandedly more important than these things” but rather to say simply that life undulates. As I’ve noted before, roleplayers who attach their writing very closely to their happiness (or as a means to sating their depression) will find that as their life undulates, so do their roleplaying habits. But then, enter discipline, something that is beneficial in every single area of your life without fail.

Discipline is what causes you to get up to your alarm clock, even when you know you could probably get away with hitting snooze two more times. Discipline is telling your friend you’re sorry for what you said, even when you feel like you don’t want to do it. Discipline is doing your homework now rather than putting it off until the day before it’s due. Discipline is working steadily at your job, even when you think you can get away with checking your personal email or popping on Facebook. Discipline is what binds us to our work, what allows us to be productive even when we certainly do not feel like it.

It’s also an increasingly difficult trait to locate among roleplayers, I’ve found. As someone who’s spent all too much time on the internet, wasting one hour after the next, I’ve experienced this first hand. I used this place as a way to escape from my life and my responsibilities. I used it to zone out, to relax, and to excuse the thought of doing anything productive. Oh, I made all sorts of arguments with myself, but if I face the music, I realize this: I played World of Warcraft for 4800 hours (200 days) in the span of 2.5 years. That comes out to me spending about 35-40% of all my waking hours on one game over that timespan, and that last half a year wasn’t played that much. Keep in mind, this is while spending 30 hours a week at school, not to mention homework. It’s absolutely terrifying, looking back on it, and I wonder why it happened.

A good reason was because I had zero sense of discipline in my life. If it came between doing math homework that wasn’t going to be turned in or spending a few hours on WoW? I’d take the video game. Why? Because it was easier.

For roleplayers, overcoming this is one of the most important things you can come to face. Especially for roleplayers, this presents a serious challenge because in a sense we are poking at the one form of writing that requires the least amount of commitment to meet enjoyment. For a roleplayer, you can spend 30 minutes 4 times a week writing posts, and it will count to your credit—active, they call it. You can put off your work, and no one will really care. And what’s best? When you get bored of your character, you can simply disappear for three months and come back with tales of splendor.

“Sorry guys, Skyrim came out.”

No one minds a bit.

No one will even think it out of the ordinary, which is really troublesome. Something I realized while roleplaying over the last year—and I REALLY noticed it while doing NaNoWriMo—was that I could control myself easier than I’d thought. I would look at a roleplay post that I had to do, and 95% of the time my immediate response would be, “Oh I’ll do that later.” But when is later? Sometimes it was an hour, sometimes tomorrow, sometimes it was three months, and that’s not… good. It’s not acceptable either, but we’ve come to expect it.

I found that if I immediately countered that impulse with almost a sort of vindictive, “HAH! I’ve caught you trying to be lazy. Now you have to do it” I was always able to overcome it. When I turned that behavior against myself, things just sort of fell in place.

For a long time one of my favorite arguments to qualify me being lazy was, “I’m not feeling inspired today.” Or perhaps, “Ah sorry, I just don’t have ‘muse’ for that!” whatever that means. It was pathetic, really. But because I had no discipline whenever I was struck with obligation, I simply bent to avoid it. I learned that I could put people off, and I learned that there were a lot of excuses (like I’m too busy) to make amends for not posting that evening.

But the fact of the matter was that those roleplay posts would take me 30 minutes at an absolute maximum, and the only reason I wasn’t doing them was because I was lazy and had no discipline. There was no one to keep me in check but myself, and I had no sort of character in me that would hold me to that.

So there’s one last argument to be made, and I think it’s good to strike it down as I close. Oftentimes people will say, “But this is supposed to be something I enjoy. How does this idea make any sense if I have to make myself do something I’m supposed to just enjoy? Shouldn’t the enjoyment of roleplay be enough to inspire me to post?” This is a good question, and worthy of note, but the idealism behind it is unfortunately not stable enough to support the claim.

First and foremost: everything in this life that’s worth having comes at a price. Whether it’s your time, energy, or even your money, you will have to expend to receive. The simplest example is, “Do you want money? Then work a job for it.” But this goes to even very personal things like, “Do you want a good relationship with your spouse? Well, then you’re going to have to work for that too.” While perhaps less significant, roleplay is no different. You may be tempted to say, “This is a stupid, childish thing that isn’t worth expending any of my resources over” and that’s your call to make. I would suggest deciding that when it’s not coupled with those feelings of, “I don’t want to post at all” though, because of my second reason.

From my experience, and experiences I’ve gathered from others, when you apply the effort and extend yourself past simply what you want to do, it’s worth it. When you break through that barrier and reach out in discipline, posting even when you don’t feel like it, writing even when you don’t feel particularly inspired, then the rewards are far sweeter than when you just “were having fun” honestly.

Once you give up something for it, you get a lot more back.

Sometimes I feel like National Novel Writing Month was placed in November just to test the mettle of students. After all, this is when your final projects are coming in, your papers are due and your exams are beginning. You want us to write a 50,000 word novel while doing all of this? It’s not easy, but it’s possible, and thousands of people do it every year. I guarantee it’s possible for roleplay too, something which requires a lot less of that discipline to enjoy.

Best of luck!