Burn your television.

Pour half a gallon of kerosene on your digital cable box, light a match and wave goodbye. After that, take a hammer to your Playstation, piss your friends off so that they don't drag you for pizza on Saturday night and disconnect your phone.

Now you're ready to write.

Bit extreme, isn't it? The lengths one has to go to in order to focus on twenty-two pages of script or one hundred and twenty pages of screenplay? Months ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by some comic book websites and each asked me the same question: what's the hardest obstacle to overcome in order to become a working writer? Many would-be writers would jump up here, arms waving like know-it-all fifth-graders in remedial English and say that the toughest thing is getting noticed, standing out, finding time, getting connections or, if in comics, finding a dependable artist to work with.

I call bullshit to all of that. There are ways around all of those things so quit your bitching. Because if you're at that point in your evolution as a writer - if you've let yourself be sucker punched and are making excuses - then you'll never understand that all of those can be solved after tackling the ultimate obstacle:

Discipline. It's as simple as Point A to Point B. To master writing you must first master yourself.

As a writer with a day job, my greatest enemy is free time. After working a nine-to-five, most folks just want to come home, kick off their shoes and decompress with a bag of chocolatey pretzels in front of CSI. No one wants to come home, eat a quick dinner and strap themselves to a drawing table or keyboard for the next four hours - not when they own a Nintendo 64, a DVD projector and there are bars and clubs in walking distance. So how? How does one hone mind, energy, body and ethic to essentially (for those not full time professional writers) work two jobs - one for little to no pay in the hopes of long term payoff?

In one of the interviews I did, I wrote: "The trick - and it really is a trick - is to find one or two hours in the day or night when you can say Neil is no longer here, folks. Neil has left the building. Leave your message with my machine. That's the time that's strictly given to Lord Captions McGee, High King and Deity of Comics. You wipe your mind clear from the trials of the day and lock the bolts on your cardboard box - by god, its funny book time."

How do you wipe your mind when it's screaming for sleep? How do you clear the trials of the day when bills are due, you've a date on Thursday and your friends want to see The Life Aquatic?

I said it was simple. I didn't say it was easy.

Rumor has it that a certain screen/comics writer rents a small studio apartment, furnishes it with a table, writing materials and a chair, locks the door and simply... writes. Do we have to resort to nigh religious levels of doing away with worldly possessions in order to bang out a good story about time traveling monkeys?

It's a bit like exercise, isn't it? If you have a minute, visit your local gym around one or two in the afternoon. Walk up and down the rows of treadmills, stationary bikes and cross trainers and find out how many of these lunchtime LaLannes are giving up an afternoon burger to get in forty minutes of carb killing. How about those utter and complete loons who rise before G-d intended humans to open their eyes to run three miles in wind chill factor negative fifty? What inspires these people to Olympian heights four to five times a day for an average of two hours?

Discipline.

So why not apply the same drive to writing? When I was a kid, my parents always used to harp on the fact that though I was floundering in Math and couldn't name half the Prophets I was learning in Bible class, I had no problem telling friends who the first seven members of the Justice League were (Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Black Canary, Flash, Aquaman, Green Arrow and the Atom) or the real names and hometowns for three quarters of the G.I. Joe team (Ripcord? Wallace Weems, Columbus Ohio). What was important to me, I knew. What I wanted to focus on, I focused on. I'd been harping for years that once I graduated college I was going to move to New York. I kept talking about jobs I'd apply for and apartments I'd live in. But as time went by, I stayed put in Detroit, working a dead end job in a boring town. Finally, after a close friend who had never shown interest in moving took off for New York, my brother took me aside and laid out a truth I had never let affect me before: "Neil, as long as I've known you, if something was important enough to you, you went out and got it." Within months I had packed up my things, moved to New York without a job and an apartment - and within six months had found both.

If it's important enough to you, there are no excuses.

Your pals are shooting hoops this Sunday? Leave an hour early or miss out this one time. Your favorite show is on TV? Get someone to tape it. Looking to get your writing career into the best shape of its life? Forget the gym - carry a pad and write during your lunch break.

It's a state of mind. It's a work ethic that you'll apply to everything that you do.

The sooner you discipline the way you work, the sooner you can discipline the way you write.

Trust me - you'll thank yourself for it. And so will your television.

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BIG POND is a collective column that begins with ideas and continues with opinions. Each column focuses in on my musings about writing for the comic book, film and television industry and then gives way to opinions on the week's topic by a diverse group of writers.

This week, we're joined in the pond by Brian Wood and Antony Johnston, both of whom have become full-time freelance writers in the last few years.

Their thoughts on this week's topic:

Brian: "My discipline is pretty much based on one thing: fear. Total and absolute terror of missing a deadline or making an artist wait for script or risking a paycheck or a print date because The Wire Season 2 came out on DVD that week. I guess if I was less afraid of being flaky I'd have a problem. That's not to say I have never made an artist wait - I have, just ask Becky Cloonan - but for the vast, vast majority of the time I've retained that work ethic since it was beaten into me in college.

"I've written at nights after long days at my day job, and now I write full time in an office in my home, and I gotta say, its harder now to focus. I think when I only had nights and weekends to get things done, it just never occurred to me to goof off. Again, the work had to get done and so I would do it, and my friends would just learn to stop inviting me out, because I would never go. These days, the entire day is mine to spend, in theory, any way I see fit, and to spend it writing requires an empty house around me, very loud music, and a degree of that Fear.

"Fear doesn't work the same if you aren't writing for a paycheck, though. If you're new and are writing something on spec or to self-publish, I can see where it would be difficult. You don't have that editor emailing you every day to prompt you along, or that look in your artist's eyes when they realize that they'll be the ones having to work even faster to make up for your lateness. In that case, Neil's right, its all discipline. Self-control. Which, to be blunt, you all should already have if you're over the age of eighteen and are making your own way in this world.

"Were I to offer any suggestions, and I hesitate to only because I know not everything works for everyone, I would recommend figuring out what makes you WANT to write, and then making sure that thing is more powerful than, say, the other thing that makes you want to play Xbox games, or surf around on SuicideGirls. For me its certain music or movies I'll put on in the background that inspire me and make writing a script the most appealing activity in the world. 99 times out of a hundred, that works for me. I've also been known to abuse myself a little to get results, refusing to eat lunch or dinner until a script is complete, but I realize that's a little crazy. Works, though.

"Fear, starvation, sensory deprivation, poverty. The building blocks of a successful writing career!"

Antony: "I couldn't agree more. You don't have to be fanatical about your writing time, but you have to be able to do what you say you're going to do.

"Some writers set themselves a minimum word count every day. It doesn't matter if it takes ten minutes or ten hours, you write at least that many words. Tomorrow, you do the same again. If you write more than the minimum, great - but you still have to write that same minimum again tomorrow. (Note that this method isn't so easy to employ when you're writing comics, but can easily be translated into a minimum number of story pages per day.)

"Other writers set themselves task minimums, where it's not the words or story pages that matter so much as what gets done. Today, for example, I wrote five story pages of one book, a portion of design work I needed to finish, and the first draft of a series pitch.

"No matter what the method, it's a question of knowing how much you have to get done every day to meet your deadlines, and applying that to how much you know you can get done. Know. Not think. Honesty with oneself is paramount if you're going to work to deadlines.

"On the flipside, though, I'd never advocate shutting yourself off from the world. You need to go out and talk to people, you need to read books, you need to watch TV and see movies, you need to listen to music... You need to do these things because you're writing about life - even if you're doing the most surreal fantasy, really, you're still writing about life - and you need these experiences to keep your brain ticking over, to absorb life, to help you make connections and gain inspiration.

"Think of it as research, and you'll feel a whole lot better about relaxing after a day spent pounding the keyboard."

The column doesn't end there, though - head on over to the The Big Pond forum at the Scryptic Forums and add your opinion to the Pond! Join the collective column and talk writing with myself, this week's contributors and the rest of the Scryptic writers.

My thanks to Brian and Antony for agreeing to jump in to the Pond this week - check out their great body of work at their respective websites. You'll be glad you did!

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Neil Kleid won the Xeric grant for NINETY CANDLES, an experimental graphic novella, and his first graphic novel, BROWNSVILLE, (with artist Jake Allen) debuts from NBM Publishing in 2005. A graphic designer by day, Neil harbors notions of writing full time. Weep for him.

Antony Johnston is the author of eight graphic novels, including JULIUS, SPOOKED, and THREE DAYS IN EUROPE (Oni Press) and the series NIGHTJAR and YUGGOTH CREATURES(Avatar Press). His next graphic novel, THE LONG HAUL(with Eduardo Barreto) is due from Oni in February.

Brian Wood is the award-winning creator of CHANNEL ZERO and The Couriers family of graphic novels, as well as the series DEMO with artist Becky Cloonan. Look for his original graphic novel THE TOURIST in April.