The Quiet Work of Patience (and Why I Don’t Force My Books Anymore)

I’ve learned something about myself as a writer that I wish I’d understood years ago:

My best work happens when I’m not working.

Not in the literal sense — I write constantly. But the real shape of a book doesn’t come from typing. It comes from the quiet, invisible stages in between. I move through them like weather patterns, each one necessary, each one impossible to skip.

I call them:

Writing → Assessing → Collecting → Waiting → Reconstruction

And the strange part is:
the “waiting” stage is where the magic actually happens.

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Writing

This is the raw, impulsive phase.
The part where a story bursts through the cracks, messy and wild, usually in a rush I can’t fully control. It’s instinct-driven, emotional, almost physical.

But writing fast doesn’t mean finishing fast.

It only means I’ve given myself raw material to work with.

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Assessing

Then the fog rolls in.

I step back.
Look at what I built.
Circle the parts that hum.
Cross out the parts that lie.

This is the phase where I decide:
Does the story want to continue right now?
Or is it asking me to step aside?

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Collecting

This phase is deceptively quiet.

I’m not drafting.
I’m not outlining.
I’m not even consciously “working” on the book.

But I’m absorbing everything.

A sentence in a podcast.
A strange memory that returns at the wrong hour.
A bit of dialogue I overhear in a checkout line.
A metaphor that flashes in the middle of a drive.

All of it goes into the vault.

This is the compost stage — life breaks down, ideas stew, and things rot into something fertile.

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Waiting

Most writers don’t talk about this part.

Waiting feels like failure.
It feels like you’re falling behind.
It feels like you’re betraying the project.

But I’m learning this truth the hard way:

You can’t rush the spark without killing it.

I could keep hammering on Wolf Wounds/Wolvenbound right now.
I could force pages.
I could bend the story into shape.

But that would give me a book that’s written, not one that’s alive.

The spark isn’t here yet.
And I don’t chase sparks anymore.
I let them return on their own time.

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Reconstruction

Then one day — suddenly, quietly — it clicks.

A missing connection snaps into place.
A character finally tells the truth.
A metaphor settles where it belongs.

This is the phase where the book becomes the book.

Not through grinding,
but through alignment.

Reconstruction is where I return to the pages like a carpenter returning to a half-built house. I know what the structure wants now. I know what to tear down. I know what to save.

This phase is fast, clean, powerful — but it only works because of the patience that came before it.

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So where am I now?

Right now, I’m in the waiting and collecting phases with Wolf Wounds.
The bones are there.
The pulse is forming.
But the spark — the thing that makes it mine — hasn’t returned yet.

A younger version of me would have panicked.
Would have forced it.
Would have burned out.

Now I know better.

Patience isn’t procrastination.
Patience is craft.

Patience is how I let stories grow beyond what I first imagined.
Patience is how I avoid writing the wrong book.
Patience is how I let the work tell me who it wants to be.

And when the spark comes back?

You’ll feel it.
You always do.