Writing teaches me patience, (doesn't it?)

against your will, choice, or preference...the wisdom comes

I don’t learn quickly, easily, or well enough for it to last a long time, or so my writing life leads me to conclude.

For me, clarity about my next writing move doesn’t happen when I’m skipping through the bluebells or meandering along a grassy path and while bending to gather a delicate bundle of yellow wildflowers I discover what my next move is, right there waving Hello! to me in the sunlit afternoon breeze.

Nope. I trod, plod, drag and cajole myself, on a sloppy, mud-packed, well-used horse trail, lobbing self-slamming insults at myself all the while, until I can’t right myself after a wobbly tromp and I faceplant over a mossy, banana slug-strewn log, into a disgusting puddle (of questionable origin). I see something then, sure…but even after the dozenth (yeh, it’s a word) fall I don’t integrate the wisdom I found. Rather, I nosedive time and time again, snorking wisdom up my nose to the point of drowning and then exclaim (to the ambulance drivers and stretcher bearers) - “Holy shit, I saw something down there, and I think it’s a sign of what I’m supposed to do, don’t ya think?”

I don’t trust easily either, evidently, because I have to excavate the puddle with my bare hands to find the remaining portion of the miniscule nugget of gold. I know this is my own doing, of course…conditioned as I am to presume things must be difficult for me to value them. Sound familiar?

Writing is the teacher here, yet again.

I’ve been keening for my next book—yearning for the tap to start dripping in my mind in the undeniable way it has before—waking myself with anxiety in the night, hearing the generous feedback of my agent, readers and writer pals who said a followup to Loving Large is worth pursuing. I let the doubts, negative self-talk and the monkey mind gain ground, creeping into that space…Maybe I shouldn’t bother. There are so many other things that need my attention. Another memoir, really?

What I thought was me self-flagellating, (and sometimes it was), was me learning the value of waiting. Again. I went through this with my first book, and it comes up daily at my desk with my book-coaching clients. As with so many preachers, I didn’t practice my homilies.

This week marks THREE YEARS since Loving Large published into a cold, locked- down book-launch-blind world.

Late in 2020, eight-plus months into the pandemic and watching those around me lose jobs, try to “pivot”, wrestle with personal dilemmas and crises in ways that once wouldn’t have been likely because they didn’t doubt that they lived in a world where some higher power wanted them to ultimately be happy (thanks COVID-19), I was getting messages from the Universe.

Sometime in early December after a couple of weeks of witnessing horoscopes come true, a Bunyan-felled oak dropped on my path and I started the draft of my next manuscript. Where to next? was the question that fell out of my mouth to whoever my co-pilot was whether on errands, vacation, or day trip. I would say it to my dog, my kid, my bestie, my boyfriend. It is an invitation or perhaps an offer, and certainly a rhetorical question. But it was finally what it’s form would dictate it should be—a question to the ether. Eureka! Happy days! Here I go!!!

         

“Where to next — and other midlife questions,” — that was it. My next move.

Yet, the literary fairies…they earned the last snicker and they took it. Over two years later, little bits of that next memoir drop into my lap every month or so. (okay, okay, I’ve worked on two dozen books and book proposals since then…) yet still I wait for the sound of my own voice in my head, and for the space, the message, the oak on my path, the patience.

My next book will come when it does? Can you relate?

Writing teaches me the patience that I don’t seem to have for anything else in my life and so I know, it is my mission.