The perks of slowing down: how patience improves your writing
Choosing writing, whether it’s your hobby, side-project or dream career, means choosing patience. While it can be incredibly frustrating when everything from your individual progress to the industry itself seems to be moving at a snail’s pace, there are a lot of lessons to learn when we slow down. Patience is a beautiful attribute and is one of the qualities that the Holy Spirit helps us cultivate (Galatians 5:22-23). When you cultivate patience, it’s a sign you are growing and walking your God-given path. When we operate under a sense of pressure and urgency, it’s usually a sign that we’re falling into the worldly traps of hustle culture and proving ourselves. Patience improves both our writing and our character!
Putting unfinished work out into the world
I’ve done it a hundred times, sent a piece out for submission before it was ready. When I operate under a sense of urgency, I’m usually looking forward to the recognition and reward. But when I do that, I sell my writing short. I wonder how many times a piece of writing that was rejected might have been accepted if I’d slowed down and spent a little more time on revisions? We often think a piece is done long before it actual is. All writers do this because we can’t clearly see the quality of our own work. Sometimes more time can improve our writing exponentially. It’s never too late. Writing can always be revised and built on. Writing happens in layers and iterations. But don’t let your urgency make you rush something to the finish line because sometimes we only get one chance for a submission.
Creativity needs a chance to breathe
We live in a culture of rushing, hustling and producing. So much in this world tells us that our value lies in what we can accomplish and produce. But creativity often refuses to be beat and boxed in. The more we rush and hustle, the more out of grasp creativity feels. It won’t be forced and it won’t be bent into any unnatural shape. Creativity needs space and time to breathe. Our capitalist culture, which focuses on quantity and speed, is often not fertile soil for creativity. Sometimes we need to leave our writing for periods of time so that we can come back to it with new eyes. Time offers the clarity we need to improve on our stories and ideas.
Getting feedback will give you insights you can’t get alone
It can be tempting to submit pieces nobody else has read. But I always make it a rule never to do this. Ever. Maybe you think your writing doesn’t need feedback, maybe you are afraid of others reading your work, maybe you’ve had a bad experience with feedback or maybe you’re in a rush to submit something. Whatever your reasoning, you need to know that we have huge blindspots when it comes to our writing. We can’t see glaring mistakes that are really obvious to readers. We need to take time to let others read our work before we submit it anywhere or release it out into the world. Beta readers, critique partners and editors will help us identify areas where the writing is unclear or confusing. Allowing others to read your work and taking the time to find a good critique partner is difficult. But investing time into this process will always make your writing stronger and more likely to be accepted by publications or read by a wider audience.
Don’t give up! For the next week, focus on cultivating patience with yourself and your writing. Notice the times you feel urgency, rushing or frustration and ask yourself what is at the root of that feeling. Ask God to help you slow down. Remember, there are no bad writers, there’s only experienced and new writers. We all work on a rising scale of proficiency that is much steeper and higher than we expected. Patience is the key to continuing up that hill and finding peace while working within this challenging industry!
