48: The Lessons of Patience
2/28/2013
Well, I wrote an additional 571 words to the first scene of The Wounded, and it took me five hours and it’s still not finished. But it’s late and I don’t feel like pushing it out.
The quality is okay, but nothing that’s jumping out at me. When I’m just dressing up what I’ve already played out in my head so many times and nothing new crops up, the work isn’t very inspiring. Not yet anyway.
Present-Day Reflection
7/12/2026
The lessons of patience concerning all things external to myself were learned a long time ago, but it’s only more recently I’ve come to understand the need for patience with myself as well. It’s primarily through writing that this has come to light for me – the benefits that arise from allowing things to percolate within me. Waiting for things to come to a boil before tapping into them. Keeping ideas in the oven of creativity and not removing them until they’ve been cooked to maturity.
This does apply to other parts of my internal emotional world beyond writing, but I’ve found it much easier to practice with my writing. And it’s only through experience that I’ve gotten any better at knowing when the time is right. Though often as not I still have to simply dip a toe in the water to see if the temperature is okay or not.
The metaphors abound with this idea, apparently.
