What’s the Most Important Quality in a Novelist? Patience

About 15 years ago. I visited a bookstore at the mall — a Borders or Books-A-Million —  where I found a copy of Taming the Monkey Mind,  a free Buddhist handbook on meditation. I was in my early twenties and away from college on break. Philosophy was one of my interests back then and I assumed I could benefit from the book’s teachings.

An inscription on the book’s back cover requests that “if you are finished with it, please pass it on to others or offer it to a monastery, school or public library,” but to this day it still sits on my bookshelf. I haven’t given it away because I haven’t read it. I’m just too busy. I don’t have time. There’s always a stack of other projects waiting for me.

The truth is I’m not a patient person and I have a hard time focusing on one thing for too long, but what I learned after finishing my debut novel Here Lies a Father (forthcoming from Kaylie Jones Books/Akashic Books) is how patience and trust in the writing process gets you to the finish line.

Writing is as much of an art as painting or playing the piano. As in all creative forms, an artist needs to trust the process, silence their inner critic (that’s a separate topic altogether) and simply create. If you follow the process, everything will be fine. Either you’ll finish the story that’s been burning inside of you for months or you’ll have spent that time honing your craft. That’s a win-win.

In It For The Long Haul

Over the five years it took me to write my novel, I was skeptical of this notion. I saw what was possible — my finished novel —  and my mouth was watering to have it done. I wanted it sooner, not later. Unfortunately that’s not the way it works. As months turned into years, and I felt disgusted by the mere sight of my manuscript, I realized that successfully completing a novel had more to do with patience and trust in the process than talent or inspiration. Or as the Buddhists call it, “taming the monkey mind.”

It didn’t help that my day job in public relations was all about rushing to complete multiple short-term deadlines, monitoring social media accounts 24/7, and experiencing the instant gratification of seeing my work appear days after submission. I couldn’t wait years to see my work finished!

But, as many of you have probably figured out by now, creativity takes time. Ideas need to be percolated and filtered like a smooth, savory cup of coffee, and then hammered out like raw iron through the process of revision, feedback, revision and more feedback. This is the process and it’s painful, but it’s necessary. There are no shortcuts and patience is key because it’s so easy to quit.

Write “Shitty First Drafts”

One way I’ve tried sharing this lesson with my writing students is through Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts,” a short essay stressing the importance of ceding control to the process. Most first-year college students want to submit their writing as quickly as possible for the obligatory grade. “Is this going to be graded,” they ask? There’s no time for revision or reflection, they’ve got a full load of classes and clinicals. They’re majoring in dental hygiene not journalism, writing isn’t a priority.

Lamott’s essay (which describes her time as a food writer) demonstrates that writers of all experience levels are terrified of the blank page and are impatient about getting the job done, but the experienced ones know all they can do is show up and wait for the right words to flow. She explains:

“But because by then I had been writing for so long, I would eventually let myself trust the process — sort of, more or less. I’d write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of.”

After some time had passed she’d go back and carefully polish her “self-indulgent” first draft into gold. There was no rush and Lamott trusted the process, that “spooky art” as Norman Mailer called it, that always seems to work itself out as if controlled by something supernatural.

What Can You Do?

For starters you could break down your behemoth of a novel into smaller bites, which are easier to manage so you don’t lose faith. You can be present in the moment. The other thing you can do is to stop comparing yourself to other writers. Just because they publish 500 short stories a year doesn’t mean you’re a failure for publishing five, or two, or none.

In my opinion, the best thing a writer can do is give up. I don’t mean stop writing, rather throw away all of your expectations, your carefully laid plans, and just trust the process.