I know for sure which fairy godmother wasn’t invited to my christening...the one who would have infused me with patience.  Somehow that gift was never given to me so instead, the fates have decided to force me to develop some.

     When I was three I decided I was ready to tackle school.  So, without telling my mother, I followed my brother to school one day after lunch.  Hysterical parents had to tell me that I was too young for school and I would have to wait.  Little did I know that this was to be a recurring theme in my life.

     I seem to have to wait for everything.  And for me that is the ultimate torture.   

    I am incurably punctual, so I end up waiting in doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices and airports.   I suffer from insomnia, too, so most nights I wait to fall asleep.  I shouldn’t have been so surprised when I had to wait weeks to deliver my children, either.  

    It seems ironic to me, then, that I would choose a profession where the art and duration of waiting has been brought to new heights.  Writing is the ultimate test of patience.  

    Writers wait for inspiration, then spend months or longer for the words to line up and behave themselves on the page.  We put our finished work aside and wait for it to ‘cool’ as if it were a pie fresh out of the oven.  Then we patiently rip it apart and rewrite it.  Then we wait on queries, wait for word on requested full manuscripts and editor’s comments.  Oh we’re not done though. The real waiting has just begun.  

    If we’re lucky, we wait on the decision of acquisitions, marketing and promotion.  If we haven’t lost our minds by this point, and are offered a coveted contract, we wait for editor’s comments, artwork, copyedits and line edits.  This is several months of patience in action.

    When the glorious day of publication finally arrives, we are only a shadow of our former selves living in homes where clocks have been ripped from the walls and calendars are unidentifiable through the blotches of marker.  

    How did I, the most impatient of people, survive this process, you may ask?

    Oh, it hasn’t happened for me yet.

    I’m still waiting.