I’m going to be locked down with some big word count over the next three weeks or so, so expect the daily posts to go a wee bit shorter. In fact, today begins a series of posts on virtues authors best possess lest they… I dunno, explode into a rain of viscera bits. (Viscera Bits, by the way, would make a great cereal. “Mom, I got a heart valve! They’re crunchy.” “Yay! Intestinal marshmallows!” “Neat, my milk turned to blood!”) Where was I? Right. Shorter posts, and today we start to talk about necessary authorial traits. Time to suck on the lollipop, my sweet babies. Bring me more wine! And a bucket for my waste!

“Faster. Faster! You’re Doing It Wrong!”

Yesterday, I was at the grocery store. I was rocking the self-checkout line. As much as I hate the notion that I should be expected to handle all this crap myself, and as much as I hate the midgety belt and rickety bag dispenser and schizophrenic checkout computer (“Please place the item into the bag.” “It is, computer.” “Please place the item into the bag.” “No, really, I already it into the bag, we’re good to go.” “Now releasing nano-swarm.” “What! No. No! IT BURNS. AGGHGRRBBBLE.” “Please scan your next item.”), I use it, and it gets me through faster.

I do this because I am generally not a patient person.

And yet, next to me stood a man who clearly had only a micron of the meager patience I possess.

This man — older, in his 70s, with a cane — walked up, tried to scan one item, and then started yelling at the machine. “Take it!” Then he tried again, sweeping the item across the scanner window with the speed of an unladen swallow. He was like a child flinging blocks. “Scan it! Goddamnit, scan it!” And it wouldn’t scan because his movements were simply too dramatic, too erratic.

Finally, he took the item (a bag of something; candy, maybe?) and pitched it to the ground. “Fucking thing!” he said and tried to storm off, except all his stuff was, y’know, still there.

Thankfully, he had a daughter to rescue him, and she came up and started working the machine. And the whole time, he yelled at her. “Faster. Faster! You’re doing it wrong!” (Said the man who flailed around with his bag of candy like a drowning man.)

This woman in acid wash jeans and her too-high hair glanced at me and looked ashamed, and I just smiled. Guy might’ve had dementia or something. Or maybe he was just a dick; old people can, after all, be dicks.

Suddenly, I felt like I was the king of patience, or at least its prince, and this woman its queen.

Hurry Up And Wait: Patience Is Your Best Friend

To tell another story, when I was a kid, I’d watch those PBS painting shows (Bob Ross, or that crazy Nazi), and I’d be amazed at how fast they turned around a painting. They’d go from zero to hero — from smudge of meaningless colors to a beautiful landscape — in 30 fucking minutes.

And I couldn’t understand why I was unable to do the same.

I’d follow along with my paints and pencils and paper.

And thirty minutes later, I’d have something that looked like a whale abortion. No happy little trees. Only sad little miscarriages.

I’d do the same with those “Learn To Draw!” books. I’d open it up, and see a thing about How To Draw This Fucking Horse, and I’d think, “This is going to be easy. All I have to do is draw these sketchy circles, and mysteriously these circles will suddenly become a glorious stallion bolting hard across the seafoam and sand. Fucking yes. Here I come, world. Museums, get ready for my art.”

Sure, a horse would… result. But it was some kind of equine mutant, some mythic deformation of squiggles and mane. Whinnying and gurgling, dragging itself across a plane of land that was not a beautiful beach, but rather a swampy morass of 12-year-old “talent.”

Then I said, “Fuck this noise,” and I started to write stories instead. Those I could do fast. Those I could knock out, bang, bang, bang. No whale abortions. No horse mutants. Some of my earliest stories inexplicably featured Pac Man fighting the xenomorphs from Aliens. I don’t know why, but I still await the epic Dark Horse comic “Vs.!” comic series.

I said, “Man, I can just bang out these stories super-fast.” I thought I found work that needed no patience.

Bzzt. Wrongo. I smelled of vinegar and water. I stank of douche.

Let me explain to you the life of a writer. Here it is. Ready?

Step One: Write, write, write, write, write.

Step Two: Finish.

Step Three: Try to get Written Thing out there somehow.

Step Four: Shame and degradation.

Step Five:Wait 17 years, and in the meantime, write, write, write, write.

Step Six Through Infinity: Repeat series of interlocking cycles.

Yes, the writing comes fast.

But the result of said writing does not.

To get to the point where you don’t suck and can produce a not-awful draft, you have to hone your craft over the course of many moons. To get a draft to tip-top shape, you may need to rewrite and edit twice, thrice, six times, ten times. To get that draft “out there” and potentially published, you will want months to years to get the go ahead. After getting the go ahead, the time to print (or screens or in stores) will take months or years. And the money flows like wine. Oh, no, wait, the money flows like a syphilitic slurry.

Yes, you can attempt to hop over all that and skip the standard gatekeeper models and run straight out of the barn and cobble together your own distro model. That may work, and the Internet is certainly closing the time gap. But even there, if you go whole hog and shoot patience in the back of the head, you’re going to be left with an inferior product that is now out in the world for all to see (and laugh at). Even if you’re handling all this yourself, remember that writing, like wine, takes time.

Otherwise, it tastes like a mouthful of piss.

And so I say to you, the first virtue to cultivate when hoping to become a writer is: patience.

The Dark Side Of Patience: Sloth

No, the world will not move at a breakneck pace to publish your work.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work, though.

Be patient with the world, but I find a little impatience with yourself can be enlivening rather than enervating. You may have the tendency to suddenly gain newfound patience with your own pace, and that patience can suddenly bloat and swell from nursing on junk food and suddenly become dread sloth. “I’ll get there eventually,” you think. “These things take time.”

They take time for all the external factors to line up.

You, though, you’re in control of the internal elements.

So don’t fuck around. Feel the urge. Note the pressure. Act on it. Don’t eke out some thin little diarrhea threads of fiction. Write, fucker! Write. Jab yourself in the ass with a electro-prod. Get moving. Just because the world won’t move at your desired pace doesn’t mean you can’t. Yes, it’s going to take approximately One Glacial Epoch to get your novel published (if ever). But you still need to finish the novel to get to that point, don’t you? Don’t multiply the slowness. Further, once you’re done, are you just going to sit on your hands while the novel moves through the labyrinthine tubes? Hell no.

Write.

Write.

Always write.

ABC.

Always be closing.

Coffee is for closers only.

Be patient with the world, but don’t let yourself fall into gross torpidity.

Patience, yes. Sloth, no.