Writing Inspiration
Waiting for Words: Cultivating Patience in Your Writing Life
Good books take time.
I’ve been writing for my entire adult life. I started with short stories back in college and grad school and began writing novels after my first book, a collection of linked stories, was published in 2001. Sometimes I go a couple of years between books. Once, I went six years between books. During the periods between books, I was still writing. My last novel came out in 2021, so I am in an in-between period now. Of course, I’m still writing. I’m just not doing it very quickly.
In Bodies in Motion and at Rest, Thomas Lynch describes the essential, exquisite calm that comes with a life of the mind, a life in books.
“All you need is a little peace and quiet and the words will come to you — your own voice or the other’s. Your own voice or the voice of God. Perspiration. Inspiration. It feels like a gift.”
The writer’s life requires an ocean of patience. If you can find a place in your life for that patience, you will reap the rewards. There is peace to be found in the practice of patience, in the stillness that books and writing bring, in the act of waiting for words. Most writers crave stillness, a quiet hour and a quiet room. I think we crave it more in times of chaos. There…
