One of my continuing challenges I have is my impatience. I am impatient with my career. I am impatient when I read. And I am impatient when I write.
One of the things I have tried to temper when I began writing novels were my expectations. Ignorance is a bad guide and I have learned from past experiences that hoping to accomplish something is very different than knowing how to accomplish something. Basing expectations on hope will set you up for failure because it is not tethered to the real world.
So, I spend a lot of time learning how a thing should be done before telling myself when I should accomplish that thing. That being said, I’m still behind schedule. If I had stuck to my original (and ignorant) plan, I would be publishing my first novel this week. Gabby Wells: Water & Blood was originally scheduled for release on June 4th.
Then I started learning more and more about self-publishing. I started reading a lot and listening to about ten podcasts a week and learned about sales funnels and permafree and mailing lists and building tribes and street teams. That led to the idea of writing a novella as an entryway to novels. That led to writing five novellas. And that has altered my expectations.
All of the changes have been for the right reasons, but my impatience doesn’t really care about that. It wants to be done.
I’m also an impatient reader. I fight the urge to skim through in order to find out what happens next. I must force myself to digest every word because, now writing novels, I know how much time and effort each of those words represent.
But my impatience doesn’t really care about that.
It is no surprise, then, that I am an impatient writer. In my first draft I am very much a heads down, get from A to B as directly as possible so I can move onto the next thing that happens. Only after the plot is complete do I go back and look for the many ways I can elaborate character or intention. All of those layers take time.
But my impatience doesn’t really care about that.
So, as I am knee deep in daily writing, fighting to go straight from A to B, I force myself to try and be patient. I know what is supposed to happen in all five novellas. I know what is supposed to happen in all five novels. I just can’t wait for them to be done. Unfortunately (actually, fortunately) those pages are waiting on me, an impatient writer, to fill them with the stories I see in my head.
As much as I remind myself, my impatience doesn’t really care that.