On patience

~If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.~

Isaac Newton, English mathematician & physicist (1642 - 1727)

Writing a long work is a study in patience. This is probably why I have not been very successful at getting beyond page 20 or so in an evolving story. I want it done now and I haven't much patience for the process.

In the last year, though, I've taken on some longer projects, such as book editing and writing articles that won't see the light of day for six months after submittal. So I think I am trying to learn patience in my (ahem) old age. Not that 43 is old. . . .

So now, 30 pages later, (7,500 words, I have a long way to go), I am still writing on this novel that I've been slowly eeking out for three weeks. Nobody likes the beginning, but I keep gritting my teeth and saying to myself, it's a first draft, you can rewrite that part after you figure out where the book is going.

And I've picked up another project that is quite involved. It is a learning process and I keep telling myself that it'll work out in the end. But the end is months away, and for a woman of little patience, that is a very long time indeed.