Welcome to the Writing in the Disciplines Web Site.
This site was created as a resource for both students and their instructors. It is designed to help the students to keep updated on the lessons and activities to be reinforce in the four walls of the classroom. Indeed, time is very insufficient to cover all of the lessons to help students enhance their writing skills. This site will be responsive to student’s needs and invite questions, comments, and suggestions.
Writing is not a task but a Discipline.
If a writer considers writing to be a task, he/she is doomed to failure. Since it cannot be a task, then what is it? It is a discipline. What does that mean?
A discipline means development, and that means preparation. So a writer must prepare to be a writer and that means study, study of the English language--its words, its structure, its syntax, and its style. That is the groundwork that a writer must follow all his/her life. This implies training.
Where does a writer obtain this training? From many sources--workshops, seminars, courses, reading, and connection with other writers. Every day becomes part of a writer's training. Every moment adds to the writer's store of information, ideas, topics, and themes.
Discipline means the cultivation of input, of broadening the writer's outlook, of developing something to say, and of creating a way to say it. Without effort there can be no output--at least no yield that readers are willing to add to their store of thoughts and ideas.
Discipline means practice. A writer is not a writer until he or she puts words to paper or screen and this is the application of the training that preceded it. All of this implies a love of the art, and if that is not present, then it becomes a task, and writing can never succeed as a chore.
Discipline means exercise, which means action, which means the act of writing, of sitting before the blank page or screen and filling it. This is the time of labor, but it must be a labor of love, a desire, a need, an addiction, in fact, to expressing oneself. Of course, this action can take many forms--poetry, essays, short stories, articles, novels, and non-fiction books--but it must be treasured and desired for its own sake before it is presented to readers.
Without discipline, writing becomes nothing more that a job to be completed leaving the author unfulfilled and wanting.
Charles O. Goulet has a BA in English literature. He has published several novels that are available from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and many other online book stores.
A discipline means development, and that means preparation. So a writer must prepare to be a writer and that means study, study of the English language--its words, its structure, its syntax, and its style. That is the groundwork that a writer must follow all his/her life. This implies training.
Where does a writer obtain this training? From many sources--workshops, seminars, courses, reading, and connection with other writers. Every day becomes part of a writer's training. Every moment adds to the writer's store of information, ideas, topics, and themes.
Discipline means the cultivation of input, of broadening the writer's outlook, of developing something to say, and of creating a way to say it. Without effort there can be no output--at least no yield that readers are willing to add to their store of thoughts and ideas.
Discipline means practice. A writer is not a writer until he or she puts words to paper or screen and this is the application of the training that preceded it. All of this implies a love of the art, and if that is not present, then it becomes a task, and writing can never succeed as a chore.
Discipline means exercise, which means action, which means the act of writing, of sitting before the blank page or screen and filling it. This is the time of labor, but it must be a labor of love, a desire, a need, an addiction, in fact, to expressing oneself. Of course, this action can take many forms--poetry, essays, short stories, articles, novels, and non-fiction books--but it must be treasured and desired for its own sake before it is presented to readers.
Without discipline, writing becomes nothing more that a job to be completed leaving the author unfulfilled and wanting.
Charles O. Goulet has a BA in English literature. He has published several novels that are available from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and many other online book stores.