I am not a patient person. I don’t remember ever being patient. Even now, if at thirty (OK, thirty-one) I appear more patient than I did at three, it’s mostly because I’m a better actor than I was then. 😉
Nothing I can think of has taxed my inability to wait more frequently or consistently than writing.
- Waiting to get somewhere so I can write what I’m thinking
- Waiting for someone to read it
- Waiting for your crit partner(s) to read it
- Waiting for responses to your query letters
Now, if you’re not a writer, you may not see why some of those are so bad. But, for a writer, there is little that is more personal, and more meaningful, than their writing. Even with your children, while you can take pride in what they become, what they accomplish, there’s still a large part of them that you have no control over, that you can’t take the credit or the blame for.
But your writing is the deepest, darkest places in you spread out on a page or a computer screen. So waiting to hear what someone thinks of it once you’ve finally gotten up the nerve to share your writing is a hellish experience.
Practice makes perfect, they say. Writing has forced me to learn, if not true patience, at least coping strategies for waiting.
The nice thing is, writing itself is one of those strategies, both with pen/keyboard in hand and without. I can spend time in the car I might otherwise use to mentally chew my fingernails to nubs, instead imagining a new scene or (don’t tell anyone) trying out the dialogue between two characters, complete with voices and facial expressions.
A blessing and a curse, that’s what it is.
Enough rambling for me. Off to write!
I can’t say I was too impatient before writing, but I hate waiting when I’m expecting feedback. *Hate* it. Thankfully, I use that waiting time productively, too. I’ve got several projects going at once, so if I’m waiting for feedback from one set, I can write/edit on another set. Just think how great it would be to have an agent respond favorably to your query and then be able to say: I have (an)other novel(s) written, too! At least, that’s what I tell myself to keep from climbing under the covers and curling up for days on end. 😀