Personal Perspective: Birthdays, Cats and Patience

It’s almost my birthday.

That makes it the perfect time to post something on Christina Katz’s topic of the week…patience.

It’s common to associate youth with impatience and, conversely, age with wisdom and patience. I feel I’ve been running backward on the treadmill.

When I was a small fry, I seemed to have a limitless supply of patience. I was known--much to my parents’ chagrin--for taming any feline within a mile radius. It didn’t matter if they were strays, barn cats, feral felons, whatever. I eventually had them all eating out of my hand. Yes, literally. I didn’t manage that by sticking them on a schedule. I did it through hours of patient kindness.

It was the same with any childhood pursuit. I spent hours on anything that fascinated me, whether it was playing pretend, drawing, painting, music, walking or writing. Even my mother commented on my patience. It wasn’t a matter of rigorous character development, though. Patience came easily

When I obtained my M.A. at the ripe age of 24, I still felt patient. I was going to take the world by storm with my writing. It would happen soon. I could wait that long.

Taking the world by storm, though, gave way to a steady job that paid the mortgage. Months slipped by, then years. I grew older. A couple of short stories were published. The world remained untaken.

It was then that my patience began to wane. I started seeing that my supply of time was not limitless. With each passing birthday, I saw more of it slip away. Someday, it would run out. Where would I be when it did? What would I have accomplished? What would I leave behind to show my path through the world?

A professor told me once that you’re not a rookie in writing until you’re 40. I hope to heaven that’s true. If it is, I still have time left to be patient.

I still have time…if I’m not hit by a bus. If I don’t get cancer. If a tsunami doesn’t wipe me out. It’s more than my biological clock that’s ticking. Not only do I see my natural years floating by, unused; I’m also faced by my own mortality. My sister was 41 when she died. Was she still a rookie? I don’t think so.

I know patience is important. It’s true more so now than when I was taming tabbies and writing adolescent poetry. I know the need for quiet stillness in which ideas can develop, the need to let stories percolate and not send them out in the world before their time. I know the need to sit through one to six months in patient activity while waiting for an agent to respond.

As I enter mid-30s territory, though, I find it more and more difficult to truly be patient. I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rookie. I still want to take the world by storm. And, as another birthday prepares to fly by, I’m running out of time.

So, before my birthday on Saturday, I take a deep breath and consider the future. Seven years until I’m 40. Seven years to work on my writing. Seven years to get myself in shape for the major leagues. Seven years to be patient. Seven years?

I don’t know if I’ll last that long.

Personal Perspective: Purity of Intention

Last week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz wrote about purity of intention. I confess that I was going to let this writing prompt slip by. I told myself I was too busy. I told myself I was too tired from being sick and taking care of a sick toddler. I told myself it’s gelato season, and I just have to realize I don’t have as much time to write right now. Then I realized I was actually scared.

I realized that not because of what Christina Katz wrote (insightful as it was), but because of a blog response by T. L. Cooper on her blog, Write with TLC.

I’d like you to follow that link and read the whole post. In case you don’t, though, here’s a snippet that grabbed me.

As I begin to look at where I spend my time and energy, I feel a little disappointed in myself. Over the years I’ve taken on more and more responsibility because I feel like I have to. I feel like it’s expected of me. I feel like I “owe” it to other people. I agree to help friends and acquaintances even when it interferes with my goals. I agree to take on one more chore or run one more errand to make my husband’s life easier. I agree to add one more thing to my day because “it’ll only take 5 minutes.”

I don’t know if this is a common human malady…or common to women…or common to wives and mothers. Whatever the case, the desire to please other people has always driven far more of my actions than it should. The result is that I am in constant motion yet rarely feel I’ve gained anything in my struggle to be a writer.

After reading Christina’s post earlier this week, I pulled out my submission tracking sheet and took a look at it. The kick to my gut was that I haven’t actually submitted anything since June. WHAT!?!? JUNE?!?! When, how, why did that happen? I know I’ve been doing. In fairness to myself, I’ve been churning out marketing materials for clients. That was never where I wanted to focus, though. So, again, what happened?

The problem is that my purity of intention has slipped…a lot.

Cooper also talks about spending too much time with people who drain her creativity. I meet--and live with--far more creativity suckers than creativity boosters. Personally, my father has always been a creativity-sucker of nearly mythic proportions. Living under the same roof with him, even as a 32-year-old wife and mother, establishes a constant dampening effect on both my energy and creativity. (After all, wouldn’t enough “get a real job” hints get to anyone after a while?)

Okay, so I mentioned that I was scared to tackle this subject. Yes, just plain chicken-livered. That's because, deep down, I realized I'd lost my purity of intention. I just didn't want to admit it to myself. We usually have to face our fears in order to deal with them, though. That's true whether you have a a fear of spiders or a lack of purity!

I don’t know what to do about creativity-sucking relations. I do now realize that I need to dig out and refocus my own intentions and purify them until they’re crystal clear and sparkly-clean. If I want to be a marketing copywriter, my energy goes there. If I want to own a gelato business, I need to focus on that. If I want to write articles, that’s what I need to do. If I want to write novels, I need to spend time with my plot and characters. Will one help with the other? Maybe. If not, out it needs to go. Easier to say than do, of course. A fact, nonetheless.

At this point, I’m so mired in non-writing obligations and commitments, I can’t even see my way clear to get shed of them. With some work and clarity and prayer, though, I may have an answer soon.

I’ll keep you posted.

Are You Committed...or Should You Be?

In my last post, I mentioned time’s ability to change absolutely nothing…at least, not unless accompanied by some kind of effort or forward motion on our part. I now realize I left out an important component.

Commitment.

How committed are you to your writing career? Committed enough to get up at 5:30 in the morning to glean an hour or two before the kids or hubby get up? Committed enough to put down the how-tos and actually write? Committed enough to risk rejection by sending that writing to an editor? Committed enough to…

You get the idea.

For years, I didn’t have that level of commitment. It was far easier to work an eight-to-five I loathed than to risk my mortgage by gambling on my talent and self-discipline. Far easier to plop on the couch after work and turn on the TV “just for a few minutes.” Far easier to give in to exhaustion and hit the snooze button every morning. Far easier to go to lunch with coworkers (wet or otherwise) instead of spending the time researching markets or writing for them.

It wasn’t talent I was lacking. That sounds arrogant, but it’s not. Moderate talent combined with hard work and endurance can survive in the writing business. Dozens of published articles and books prove that (okay, just my opinion). It wasn’t self-discipline I lacked. Not completely, anyway. I grew up on a farm, and I’ve spent much of my life getting work done without supervision. No, I lacked commitment. Committing to my writing career felt like stepping off a ten-story cliff, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

In this week’s The Prosperous Writer newsletter, Christina Katz compared the writing life to a relationship. True, and more. For me, making marriage vows to my husband of almost eight years was the easier of the two commitments, even though I’d known my writing habit at least ten years longer. In a way, that’s understandable. Committing to another person only requires faith in them; committing to a career in writing takes faith in yourself. I’ve never been good at that.

Commitment takes courage. Commitment takes faith. And, once you’ve taken that ten-story leap, commitment takes the daily struggle to work through disappointment, to find points of compromise, to turn around and send that query out again instead of running back to the retreats where you used to find solace. Remember Jane Kirkpatrick’s definition of commitment as a banking term? “To make a deposit against which you can later draw.” Commitment means showing up, day after day, to put your pen to paper, fingers to keys, and an investment into your life.

So, before you can put the time into writing, you need to commit to your writing. Only you know how much of a commitment you can make. The level isn’t the same for everyone, because everyone’s dream is different. Without that promise, though, you never will find the time. Not consistently and not for long enough to matter. Until you commit, your writing is only a dream. And you can’t take that to the bank.