The Wait and the Peck

In which I highlight the hardest part of writing (The Wait) and what to do about it (The Peck).

Recently, author Greer Macallister discussed her thoughts on what she considers the hardest part of writing: the Wait:

“Writers in the process of publication are always waiting. Waiting on agents, waiting on editors, waiting for publication, waiting for cover designs, waiting for reviews, waiting for a verdict on the proposal for our next book, waiting, waiting, waiting.”

You wait for an agent/editor to respond to your pitch or your proposal.

You wait to hear from beta readers, or interview subjects.

You wait for the mailperson to hurry up and bring your coveted research that took months to locate.

You wait for an editor’s thoughts on the revision.

You wait for months and months and months on publication schedules.

The Wait can be debilitating, especially – if you're like me -- patience is not one of your virtues.

What you don’t want to do is check your email every hour to see if anyone responded. You don’t want to email your editor, or agent or beta reader every two days to ask if they had a chance to read it yet. Nor do you want to shower them with promises of chocolate in the hope that it might help the process.

What you can do, as Holly Schindler recently suggested in her article, is The Peck.  

There are all sorts of advice on how to deal with The Wait. (Take a walk. Read a book. Take a course. Be sociable. Garden.) The Peck, it turns out, is one of my favorite strategies. As Holly offers,

“I’ve tried all sorts of different approaches to juggling multiple jobs over the years, searching for a process that fit me and my working style the best. Never was this more important than this year, when I was taking several courses and expanding into commercial illustration and editing in addition to keeping up with my full-time writing.”

Keeping fairly loose schedules, Holly does a little bit here, a little bit there. In the end, she discovered, if she finds she’s making progress on everything, she feels less overwhelmed.

For me, I peck at working on two or three projects at once. While I wait to hear on one project, I peck on another outline, following a narrative structure arc so I stay organized. I may read a chapter or two of research, making notes to fill in the action timeline. I’ll work on character sketches. But I may also discover an interesting tidbit along the way – new research, for example, that seems very promising. It’s not uncommon for me to start research on a new project while weaving the threads on another.

Even as I work on a draft, I find that The Peck works to my advantage. Switching gears, if only for a bit, allows the scene to simmer a bit. It allows characters to stew a bit in their muck. If I’m working on a particularly hard scene, taking a break gives my brain a minute to process. Through the years, I find that I am most creative in the morning hours; thus, I use the morning hours to work on my draft while using the afternoon to Peck.

Of course, you still have to do the other stuff. Burn-out is a very real thing When you take care of yourself, you’re a better writer. This is why patience is key.

“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

 

-- Bobbi Miller