The Art of Waiting Patiently

A recent game I tapped into on Yahoo Games had a cute message as it loaded up:

"i am somewhat impatient, but i know that the game will be loaded soon"


It made me think so much of my own life--well, two aspects of it, anyway. You see, all my life I've been struggling with my weight. I could never fit into my older sister's hand-me-downs as a kid (and that was pointed out quite often, given our financial hardship), and even now, as a Zumba Fitness instructor and careful eater, I still have trouble losing a pound. My husband gives up desserts and loses ten pounds without really thinking much about it. He admits he would have given up years ago if he'd seen as little progress as I have in trying to lose weight.

Yet I've seen the same sort of success in my writing. (Translation: not bloody much). I've sent out tons of queries and received nearly as many rejection slips (nearly as many only because many agents and publishers don't send replies if they don't like something). Not a single request for more material. My plays have been only slightly more successful, only because I've been pretty lucky to find places where I can do a staged reading or get some great feedback.

So why do I do this? People have asked me why I don't just give up. Why continue to do Zumba if it doesn't make the pounds drop off the way it seems to for everybody else? Why keep writing if I don't sell any novels?

I see the rational basis for this. It is logical. But it errs because it's based on an assumption which simply isn't true: it assumes I do these two things only because of the outcome I'm hoping for.

I know many who do. I know all sorts of people who try Zumba--or vegetarianism, or some diet fad--only because of the outcome they hope for. I know writers who are only concerned with completing a novel so that it can be marketed.

They and I do not work towards the same ends. Or perhaps, for me, the ends simply aren't as important as the act of doing. Why do I do Zumba? Because I adore Zumba. It is more fun than I have doing any other physical activity. It fills me with joy, fosters in me a belief in my own beauty and sexuality, frees me like nothing else does. The act itself is fantastic, no matter its outcome.

The same goes for writing. I don't write to finish. The process is what matters. Writing is my therapy, my shy chance to speak, the who I am in a long list of whats. It's part of my chromosomal make-up, and the only frustrating parts of it include not making enough time for it and not being as good a writer as I would like. But writing is bliss. Sheer bliss.

I suppose the title is a lie, then. I don't have to be patiently waiting for the outcomes I would love to happen. I'm delirious in the moment, charged with energy and elated by the passion of these two activities. I'm not really waiting patiently for anything. It's already here.

Where do you find your joy? Do you hold onto this, or does the outcome matter more?

The Trials of Waiting

The pictures of the backsplash have been taken, but I am now across the country, with two kids in tow, and without the USB attachment I need to download the pics onto my laptop.

So you'll have to wait. Get used to it. Some things take time.

My novels have taken time, and they are still not finished. Not one of them. I have my Ark novel up on my desktop, and my fingers are itching to get at it, especially after reading a book on making my novel work better. But they'll just have to itch a little longer. I have some characters to develop a whole lot more first, and I'm doing so methodically, by writing all sorts of details about each one--choices, ethics, changes--in a notebook.

I'm not allowing myself to write yet, not until the characters are all fleshed out and I've added extensively to the second half of my novel's outline. You see, the first draft of this book was written without a plan, and now that I'm pretty much abandoning the latter 2/3 of the novel, I want a better idea of where I'm going before I get there. So I'm shaping, and characterizing, and plotting the boat's journey on a map. I'm prepping.

By the time I'm finished prepping, my little child of a writer's psyche is going to be throwing a tantrum to be allowed to write. It's already starting to snivel a bit, whine, and pull at my pajama pants.

But it doesn't get what it wants. Not right now. It'll have to be patient, even if waiting is a trial. Since I'm on vacation, finding the time to work on all of this is harder, but I'm making slow progress. And before long, my happy little writer's psyche will be allowed out of its cage.

I'm looking forward to that.

Move Me

Patience is a virtue

I don't have

Give me a plot that moves

A conversation that brings up something new

Or lose me

Make characters change

The world

Themselves

The inner workings of my brain

Or I'll move on

Grow

Or help me grow

Beyond the confines I am used to

Or I will finish up your book

(If I finish it at all)

And sigh

Well

That was

Okay

But

Nothing

Really

Happened.