Blogger: Mary Keeley
Writers are continually advised to be patient during the journey to representation. And once you have an agent, the need for it begins again during the knuckle-biting process of waiting for your first—or next—contract offer. Patience is a necessary tool of the trade, but it’s a challenge to overcome a love-hate relationship with it. How well are you succeeding in the day-to-day trenches of your writing life?
Synonyms for patience include: composure, self-control, serenity (yes!), 
diligence, tolerance, imperturbability (good one!), backbone, fortitude, grit, calmness (yes, indeed), long-suffering (oh, yes), humility (uh huh), and constancy.
Rate your patience level on a scale of one (problem area) to five (doing great) on each of the following statements:
- I don’t get frustrated with myself during the plotting phase of my book.
- I readily accept the fact that my writing career is half the actual writing and half the marketing and promoting of my books.
- I receive my critique partners’ or editor’s constructive criticisms without becoming defensive. I’m thankful they catch problems I missed.
- Much as I would like to hear from my agent regularly, I recognize that he or she cannot send weekly reports about shopping my book or email me just to say hi. I understand that if agents did that for all their clients, they wouldn’t have time to do their job.
- I am willing to take whatever time is needed to find a unique angle for my nonfiction topic or do yet another rewrite of my novel.
- Although receiving rejections from agents and editors hurts, their comments point to areas in which I need to improve. As a result I am becoming a better writer.
- I recognize it takes time to grow my social media following and to build my platform. I’m willing to do the hard work and continue to learn new ways to reach my target readers at the same time I am writing my next book.
- I am patient with myself when I can’t think of the perfect solution to a problem chapter. Instead of trying to grind my way through to maintain a self-imposed writing schedule, I am able to calmly step away from it for a few days, knowing that the solution often becomes apparent when I go back to it, refreshed.
- I realize that the first book I write usually is “practice.” Perhaps the second and third books are practice too. It helps to remind myself that Davis Bunn wrote seven books in nine years before his first book was published. This inspires me to persevere.
- I realize that my writing career is in God’s perfect control and timing for his purposes.
Patience is all about the grace that preserves an optimistic outlook toward your work and your interactions. Reminding yourself daily, if necessary, that your writing career is in God’s hands fosters a positive attitude that enables you to have a teachable spirit, which agents and editors look for in writer. Look again at the synonyms for patience and see that there is purpose in having this writer’s tool at the ready every day.
Total your score and share it with us. Which areas of the writing life frustrate you most? In which areas are you succeeding? What positive purposes do you see in having to be patient?
TWEETABLES:
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I Write in Multiple Genres-How Do I Choose an Agent?
Interesting post and a good self-test, Mary – thank you for this.
* I did pretty well, but it’s not something for which I can claim particular credit, as I strongly suspect my patience is from both genetics and early religious training. As an Asian, I find more and more that both body and psyche are attuned to a cyclic view of life, rather that the linear paradigm more commonly embraced by Caucasians. As the harvest will follow the planting, good will follow bad in its own time, and I can no more force it than I can will rice shoots to grow.
* Patience is not a goal or byproduct of Zen; it IS Zen, just as wetness is not a ‘quality’ of water.
* I believe, though, that patience can be learned, or at least honed:
1) When grocery shopping, pick the longest line for checkout, and maintain composure. No playing with the cell phone or toe tapping allowed. Simply wait.
2) When speaking with a friend or (especially!) your spouse, practice waiting for him or her to finish a sentence and then waiting a couple of ‘beats’ to see if they want to add more, before replying. (This is useful in developing a courteous mien, as well; finishing another’s sentences is considered quite rude in many circles.)
3) Take up a hobby like furniture refinishing; while this is not my particular area of expertise, I understand that there are processes which simply can’t be rushed (Jennifer Major, could you confirm this)?
4) Step away from pop-culture ‘quick-gratification’ consumables like music and television (especially comedy). They argue against stillness of heart.
* Of course, all of the above may be wrong, and a shield against what I would prefer not to face – that I have come to realize that I will not live to see my writing goals, and that I have come to terms with that fact without rancour or sorrow. Not a bad thing in the long view, but it does have a slightly unsettling fatalism to it, no? But I don’t know, and am content to leave it an open question.
* And we do not live to write; we are drawn to writing and its hard training in patience, sometimes unwillingly, in order to learn how to see. For as God’s voice is not found in the rushing maelstrom, so too is His Love only truly experienced by the still and receptive heart.
Oh, and Mary, I LOVE the picture!
* Maybe the “the first books are practice” statement and truth can be made easier to swallow by considering the mountain; we only see the rocks at its height, but does that make them more important than the rocks which form the base?
That looks like a carrot on the dog’s nose. Do dogs even like carrots?
A better picture of patience would be a juicy bone balanced there. Now that would call for real self-control.
I had a Pit who LOVED carrots. I started her out as a pup with frozen carrots as a kind of healthy chew-toy in summer, and she discovered that she loved the taste.
* I once had a White Shepherd and a Pit/Foxhound mix, and taught them to sit away from their dishes until I gave the OK.
– One day the Shepherd ran out of patience with me. She looked at me, looked at her buddy, and went over and started eating out of HIS dish, whilst he looked on, stricken.
– I could see what the Shepherd was thinking…”Idiot human gave me a loophole. Said I could not eat out of MY dish, but said nothing about eating my buddy’s food.”
– I hate to say it, but I was laughing too hard to reprimand her. A fact upon which she undoubtedly counted.
My 13 year old mutt LOVES carrots!!
The long grocery line–some days I’m good, some days I’m not, some days I have to talk to my heart, some days I reach the end, some days that feels like a dream, some days I ask to exchange my melting ice cream. 🙂
Shelli, this is great! 😀
The ONLY rush acceptable in refinishing is the drive to Home Depot to buy more sandpaper. EVERY other step is a lesson in total and complete patience.
I think the best cure for a stressed out person is an old table and some sand paper. Trust me.
I tried to tally a score, Mary, really I did. I’d think, “This one is a 4. Except for last Tuesday, when it was a 1.”
*My impatience is like the groundhogs in our yard. Just when I think they’ve moved on to some other space, a whole new family sets up camp in the empty den. They start to nibble at the weeds, and I think, “We can live with this.” Then in the dark of night, they strip the fruit and flowers and I’m left with are naked beanstalks.
*Give me patience, Lord. NOW!
Oh my, soul searching and math in the early morn, I need more coffee ASP!
*My honest-as-I-could-be-with-myself score is 33.
#8 is my biggest frustration at the moment as I recently discovered a major flaw involving several chapters and word count.
#9 Is just down right depressing.
#10 is something I know in my heart, yet have to remind myself everyday.
*For me, the positive of being patient is ending up with a better solution to a problem, like my multi chapter snafu. Yet I know God will eventually say “Hey, try this idea!” and it will work and be better and I can quit loosing sleep.
*Okay, I really need coffee, now.
I wonder if it would be possible to employ a minion to be patient on one’s behalf?
Methinks Shakespeare said it best, in Act V, Scene 1 of ‘Julius Caesar’:
*
“Why, then, lead on. O, that a man might know
The end of this day’s business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known. Come, ho! away!”
Okay, I’d say I’m about a 40, most of the time. But I fluctuate. 🙂 Some days I’m better, and some days I’m worse. I think the hardest reality is #9. But it pushes me to go through the works, to dig deeper into my heart and the character’s. Because I want to be better. But in the wait, I’m reading … and the novels that have crossed my path lately are heart-changing … the kind that make me want to be better and lead me there. This time is not wasted.
You fail to realize, Ma’am, how deeply you connect with people. A “simple” story about a trash bag? That, is not simple, my dear girl. It is heart changing.
Jennifer, thank you. God knows our deepest desires. I’m so grateful.
Fun quiz, Mary!
*I’m a pretty patient person in some ways (no road rage…ever) but not in others when too much patience can mean nothing gets accomplished. Some barriers are meant to be pushed through as soon as possible; others are to be waited on until they finally disappear. For most of the items you listed, I have no trouble being perseverant. I think perseverance (active) is a better approach than simple patience (passive).
#4: Don’t have an agent, so I’m already 5 pts short of perfect even before I finish the test.
#7: I’m willing to work hard on building an attractive online presence, but I’m taking the tack of starting with a platform-building website (it’s linked here today for the first time) to build an awareness among people who might be interested in reading historical fiction from the Roman era. Chasing followers at social media sites when I can’t see what I have to offer that would attract enough people – that doesn’t seem like a fruitful approach to me. I still have to figure out how to offer something worth following in the usual social channels.
#9: Maybe they aren’t actually practice. Maybe they are starting points for refining your rewriting and editing skills. I’ll give me 5 points for being willing to keep rewriting them until they are as good as they can be.
*Final score: 40-45, depending on the scoring to #7.
From attachment and fear of loss impatiences comes. A path to the Dark Side it is.
35-40
But only when I have enough Earl Grey and delusions of grandeur have faded…
I wanted a contract back in 2012 when I finally figured out POV.
But I will work until my writing is ready for the big leagues.
That’s the sweetest, Jennifer. My youngest is working on a novel. Hee hee. You should have heard me last night. When I asked whose POV it was, she said, “It’s 3rd person.” She thought because it was 3rd person, that she could give it that omniscient version. Lol. So I was like, “Even in 3rd person, you have to pick a head to be in”–I made camera lens over my eyes–“and tell that part from that person’s POV.” Her–“Oh. I get it.” I remember when I “got it” … 🙂 I always learn the hard way, but one thing about it, you never forget.