Last night, as my family gathered around a backyard firepit — our September ritual — I found myself sipping on a glass of something red, and engaging in a boisterous discussion over the future of healthcare here in the USA. The combination, I believe, was responsible for my failure to keep my passions checked. We all finally agreed to disagree, and no feelings were irreparably hurt, but I woke up this morning with a fuzzy headache, and the realization that I had not been a patient man the night before.
For many novelists, that’s an all-too-common condition. I’m no different — when I recall the hours, no…weeks, no … years of work that I’ve put into my writing, trying to be patient while waiting for publication, waiting for a review, or waiting for some better sales seems to elude me, sometimes.
It seems, writers often become impatient with themselves. Sometimes we expect a solution to suggest itself quickly. We feel the driving momentum leading to a critical point of a WIP, and then…..despite our ongoing focus……nothing.
That hasn’t happened to me often — I don’t get "blocked" I just change the channel — but when it does, I feel like I’ve let myself down. Then, every time, the inspiration arrives from some unexpected source, and I go on again, as if nothing had slowed me down.
I need to remind myself, that writing is the vocation of patient people. Impatience in writing, or marketing, or speaking, never brings the satisfaction you had hoped, and often confuses the issue at hand — even turning good ideas into garbage.
So, as I sit here, waiting to hear from three different reviewers, I’ll remind my self of that fact. Patience, Man! Patience!