There’s an old joke that goes: Lord, grant me patience . . . right NOW!
As a writer, I have learned
something about patience over the years. It takes patience to
come up with a story idea worthy of the months of labor you are going to spend
on it. I’ve learned that it takes patience to develop your outline and write
the first draft. It requires a great deal of patience as you send out your
letters of inquiry and the rejections begin arriving, one by one. Patience is
required after you finally find a publisher because an editor gets ahold of
your manuscript and takes it apart and you have to patiently put it back
together again. Several times! Then when the manuscript is acceptable, it still
takes months for it to be printed. After that the fun part begins of promoting
your book and developing a following, one contact at a time. This is the normal
process of a writer learning patience.
My experience has required me to
stretch even a little further. Two months after the release date of my book in
the U.S., my novel is still not available in Canada! The release date was
advertised as 2/5/13, which in the States is February 5. But internationally
(that is, in Canada where I live) the date means May 2. And no matter how many
emails I’ve sent and booksellers I’ve contacted, I can’t get the mistake
corrected. So now that the initial publicity wave has come and gone south of
the border, it hasn’t even begun in Canada yet. And that has been an exercise
in frustration. Translation: patience.
My grandmother used to quote this
old saying: Patience is a virtue, secure
it if you can; seldom found in women and never found in men. I am trying to
develop patience, Grandma. Honest I am. But it sure would be nice if the problem
could be resolved NOW!
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