“You’ve been working on your book forever!”
“How long has it been? 3 years? 5 years?”
“At this rate you’ll never finish.”
If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard the above or some version of it at least once. Worse, you’ve probably said this to yourself.
Being a competent writer takes time and patience. It demands a willingness for consistent effort in the face of uncertainty. We pursue writing for its own sake, for the joy it gives us, the creative contribution we can make, the stories we want to share. It is a path of resilience that depends on an enormous level of self-belief, self-trust and commitment to your craft and process. It is an act of daring. You are trying to create art and share it with generosity.
We all have a deep-rooted desire for guaranteed outcomes, so when we engage in an activity that knowingly bypasses outcomes, we feel untethered and uncomfortable. The system has beaten into us that we’re useless if we’re not showing results within a defined period of time. We don’t acknowledge the courage and learning happening within the process, especially within its failures.
It took me a decade to complete my first poetry collection ‘Stones Hold Water” because writing the poems and structuring the manuscript was not a linear process for me. Creative work is often messy, chaotic, constantly maturing. The roadmap is subject to changes – you can move forward and then have to retrace your steps, do about turns. What kept me working at it was focusing on the process of creation, the love of language, and the willingness to work to mature my craft. If the collection had taken ten more years, I might very well have put in ten more years.
That doesn’t mean that a writer can’t walk away from something they have poured considerable time and effort in if it hasn’t yielded what they expected. But move on in the belief that the attempt was not a waste of time, it was an investment in growth. This attitudinal shift accepts the gain instead of fixating on loss. It makes it easier to embrace the undertaking with patience, and respect the hours, years, decades of work without guarantees of outcome.
So keep at it! Until next time.
Aliya Naseer Farooq
Hi
Well said and just what I needed to hear.
Zakia R. Khwaja
Glad it helps, Aliya! 🙂