The life of the writer is a lot of waiting. I know, I know — a lot of it is writing, too. But waiting is a big part.

First there’s waiting for time to write. Most writers don’t write full time; they have to work other jobs and so there’s always time spent thinking with agony of the precious writing time ahead, but not there yet. Counting the hours, minutes, seconds until you can be the puppet master of your domain and create. Sometimes it can be difficult to find the patience to deal with people who do not understand your madness. They don’t understand your need to stop in the middle of a conversation to write down a great idea for your work in progress, or why you might stare off into space during a meeting because you’re working out an innovation in your plot.

When you get home, it seems the waiting might be over as you sit at your table or desk to start writing (assuming you don’t have a family to mind and household tasks to attend to first). But then it’s the more agonizing waiting: the story is there in your head — some of it fuzzy, some of it crystal clear — but it takes so long to get the words from your head to the page. Even on those days where the words flow like magic from your fingers it’s not as fast as you can think, or even as fast as you can read.

It’s so frustrating!

Even when you finish the story, then there’s the most excruciating waiting of all: you send it off to your publisher — or the one that you hope will be your publisher. Just because you’ve been published by a particular house before doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily publish the next thing you write (although of course you hope so). The distinct advantage of the new electronic publishers is that they tend (so far) to have a shorter turn around time than traditional print publishers — not to mention the ease of electronic submissions.

If you’re wise, you won’t just sit around waiting, however. On to the next story! In the end that’s the only way to deal with the impatience of the writing life: just write more!