"It's a marathon, not a sprint"
A writer asks about cultivating patience
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is an advice column for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response!
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Dear Kate,
As a writer, how do I cultivate patience? I know they say it’s a marathon not a sprint, but I’m not a long-distance runner at all.
- Wrong Temperament for Marathons
Dear Wrong Temperament,
I’m sure many of you have heard the saying before: writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Writing and publishing are long endeavors that take time and a great deal of effort. In order to make it to the finish line—whether that means seeing a book all the way through from idea to completion, or sticking with publishing when the going gets tough—most of the time the end goal isn’t going to be just around the next corner, or after the next big push. It might still be miles away.
I try to remind myself of this when I’m waiting to hear back from an agent or editor, or sending out a piece yet again, or I feel like I’ve written so much and had such a good writing day and the next day I wake up and turn on my computer and there’s. . .more writing to be done (how can this be???). It’s a basic truth that writing takes a long time. Publishing is slow. Every time you think you’ve “made it,” there’s something else to be done. I’ve never run a marathon (and don’t ever plan on it, thankyouverymuch), but my understanding is that one of the key things good marathoners learn to do is to pace themselves and make sure they don’t go out too hard at the beginning, at a pace that will ultimately prove unsustainable and tire themselves by the end.
And that’s the thing I think is important to remember: sprinting your way through a long project is fundamentally unsustainable. If you sprint as hard as you possibly can, then stop every time your body insists that you stop because the alternative is total collapse, and then you push as hard as you can again until you have no choice but to stop again, it’s going to be a LOT harder to finish that marathon than if you follow a training plan that has you run slowly and sustainably until you develop a pace you can hold over time.
When you’re saying “I’m not a long-distance runner,” I hear you saying saying you’re a sprinter in that you want things done fast and you want them done now. You want to be able to get the work out quickly and reap your rewards.
But I think you’re missing allllllllllll the work that goes into being a sprinter, too. If we continue with the metaphor of running a race, those who train to be sprinters are working just as hard as those who train to be marathoners. It’s not easier! It’s not a shortcut. It’s just another way of doing things, one that’s better suited for shorter bursts of output rather than long-term endeavors.
You say you don’t have the temperament for marathons, but do you really have the temperament for sprinting, either? Or is it that writing is hard because it’s hard, and doing hard things is hard because of course it is? I’m not sure that anyone actually HAS the “right” temperament for this sort of thing. We work at it. We cultivate it. We train.
I know I’m reading too much into your send-off — but what if I’m not? The idea that you’re “wrong” for this is a powerful and insidious perspective. No one is good at everything and it’s important to have the capacity for honest self-reflection. I’m impatient with my writing, too! I want this all to be done better and done faster, too! But I think there’s a difference between saying “I’m bad at X” and “I’m working on getting better at X.” “I feel impatient in my writing and I want to work on that” as opposed to “I’m bad at giving myself time.” You, as a person, are not “wrong.” You are working on something. That’s why you wrote in with the question (hooray!). And I think the first step to working on this is to see it as something to be worked on, not as something that’s fixed or intrinsic to your personality.
So, how to cultivate this patience?
I’ve written before about persistence and patience as you work on your craft, to make sure you’re giving yourself and your writing the best possible shot to succeed. But I get that there’s still that lingering question—how to actually develop this, especially when it doesn’t come naturally.
First, I think recognizing that these things take time is an important step. If you constantly think things are supposed to be done sooner, or moving faster, or that you’re supposed to be in a different place than wherever it is that you are, then of course you’re going to be frustrated and thinking you’re doing something wrong. But is your view of how long a project should take, how many revisions, how many false starts, how much research, how much feedback, how many queries, how many submissions, how long it takes to place a piece somewhere, etc.—is your view of how all that stuff works totally realistic? Are you giving yourself a fair timeline?
Often I do think that if people are truly honest with themselves, they may find they could be giving more time and more focus than they actually are to the writing they say they want to be doing. (I talk, for example, about doing a time audit, here.) But I also think that many people wind up beating themselves up for not meeting a goal that wasn’t fair or realistic in the first place.
Even if you’re feeling impatient because you think, say, that you should have been done with your book by now (for example). Since you can’t go in a time machine and complete it sooner, what are you going to do now to get it done? What are the strategies you can put in place to change things moving forward, instead of worrying about what you did or didn’t do in the past?
I always, always think that something done imperfectly, a little bit at a time, is better than something that’s not done at all because it’s not yet *chef’s kiss*. A draft that doesn’t exist is all hypothetical—it doesn’t count toward anything until there’s something on the page. So I think getting more comfortable at playing the long game means recognizing that a little bit of writing progress at a time adds up to a whole lot more than a burst of writing (the sprint) followed (almost inevitably) by a long stretch of drought.
I’m not trying to impose a structure on anyone’s writing time or say that the way other people write isn’t working for them (if it’s working for you then keep going!!!). But if you find yourself lurching between these bursts of sprint-like activity and and then fallow stretches where you’re mad at yourself for not writing (for not being a marathoner who can keep up a steady pace over time), one approach can be to reconsider how you’re structuring your work time altogether. If you’re constantly waiting for the “right” time to plow through some pages, it can start to feel like there’s always a ready excuse to put it off. (I’m tired/I don’t have enough time/I don’t know where to start/it’s been so long since I opened my document and now I’m overwhelmed….) I’m interested here in how to build up a habit, a little bit at at time, to keep you writing at a more steady pace, so that you’re more likely to make it all the way through to the end.
Instead of building up in your head what an ideal writing practice should look like, can you touch your project every day/regularly, even if it’s just opening the document, writing a sentence, puzzling out a paragraph, cutting something and saving it in another file to come back to, later? Can you make writing into something more manageable—not an entire race to be completed, but a single mile, or one lap around the track? Can you meet yourself where you’re at instead of thinking solely of the finish line?
And if you’re close to the finish line, if you’re almost done with a draft/a project/something that feels like completion and you’re having a hard time pushing through to the ending, or you’re struggling with what it will be like to let go of it, can you apply some of the lessons here and approach these next stages one step at a time, rather than getting overwhelmed by the whole thing at once?
When I go for a run, I stop running before I’m totally exhausted and feeling like crap. I want running to be a sustainable and dare I say enjoyable activity for me. If every time I finish I feel miserable, why would I want to lace up my shoes again? I want to think of how good it feels to do it, not how much I’m going to hate every step. I think the same thing applies to writing. I try to finish each writing session before I’m completely tapped out, so I still have energy left for the rest of my day and am excited about returning to the page. I try to stop in the middle of a scene or a moment where I still have momentum, so I’m not starting from what feels like the blank page each time.
There will be good days and, yes, a lot of bad days in there too. But both marathoners and sprinters get out there and keep working, and they come back to this thing that they love even after the roughest practice days. And that’s what we’re doing: we’re practicing. I hope you keep working on whatever project it is that you’re working on, and that you see yourself as able to learn new skills and new approaches as you go.
And honestly? Sometimes we just need to sit down and do the thing. It’s not about marathons or sprints or metaphors or who we are in some essential way. These ways of thinking can be helpful, sure. But they can also be distractions that keep us from the page — more focused on the pleasures of self-flagellation than on our actual words. What do you need to do to get writing? Start there.
And then keep going. :)
Kate
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