Are you with me? Anybody? Comment already, dangit!
Er...okay, obviously I'm not so good with this patience thing. Which shows how well I rolled on my sanity check when I chose to be a writer.
Writing and publishing in themselves do not lend themselves to the impatient soul. Some people think the route to getting published is a quick and easy transition from writing that first book, finding a perfect agent in a couple weeks, and having a book bought and published a couple months later.
This has happened before, but it's incredibly rare. Instead, most writers often spend years just honing their craft, not to mention spending all that time querying, pitching at conferences, piling up rejections, revising, more queries...all with the end goal of seeing that first book released. Of getting to that point where you feel your writing career has officially begun.
I want to be there. Now. Not here, waiting to be there sometime in the distant future.
I think about a traditional fairy tale (remade into the movie Blink, with Adam Sandler) about a boy who gets a magical ball of golden thread. Whenever he tugs more threads out of the ball, he moves forward in time. Soon, he's gleefully using the ball to skip through boring parts of his life to get to all the exciting moments.
There are many moments where I wish I had a magical item like that, be it golden thread or a universal remote control. So I could skim over the upcoming months or years until that first book contract is signed. When that first book is published. And so on. Why trudge through all the times in between when it's just waiting and more waiting?
The moral of the story, as many of you already know, is supposed to be that those exciting/important/defining moments are only worth experiencing if you go through everything that happens in between them. The hard work that goes into finishing a first draft. The hundreds of queries it takes it land an agent. The months or years it takes to find the editor who wants to buy the book. Those add value to achieving your larger goals.
But it's still hard. Some days more than others. It leads to those bad habits where you check your email a couple dozen times in 30 seconds (including the spam folder), just to make sure you didn't miss an important update. Or you surgically attach your phone to your hand and go into spasms every time it rings in case it's THE CALL.
So how does one cope? How do you keep the constant waiting game from making your brain dribble out your ears?
For me, it's a couple of ways. One is simply keeping myself involved in other writing projects while one is on submission to agents or editors. That way, should a future editor want to see other manuscripts, I'll have one polished and ready. Plus, the more I write (hopefully) the better I'll be with the next story I set my mind to.
Another way is by recognizing that, to a large degree, I don't have to wait for that first book to be published for me to officially start my writing career. I'm already in it. The career began a long time ago, and I'm just transitioning through a particular season of it. Maybe it's not a financially viable career yet, but it's still in motion. So I can spend time networking, attending conferences, connecting with other writers and authors in various seasons of their careers. Blogging, tweets, reviewing books, building relationships and a network that will endure for years to come. If I wait until even a contract is signed to pursue all this, then I'd be scrambling to play catch-up and would miss out on many opportunities in the meantime.
So while patience isn't easy, there are benefits to it. I may get antsy at times, but I believe, in the long run, patience will pay off.
Sometimes I just wish the long run had a few shortcuts.
What about you? Do you struggle with patience, both in the craft and business side of writing? How do you cope?
