patience

Hemingway, who was my favorite writer in college and will always remain significant to me, said he would stop writing when he knew where to go next. This could be mid-sentence or mid-idea. This way, when he started again, it would be easy to start, and starting is always the hardest part. It’s advice that many aspiring writers quote, because it’s good advice. It works, by leaving something in anticipation and coming back to it in anticipation. It works not just in writing but also in living, I think.

But it’s hard to leave something with the feeling that there’s more. It takes discipline, willpower, and foresight to consider the benefits of delay. I’m not too good at it. Probably because in one sense I have a lot of patience for both good and bad. I don’t get tired of continuous good too easily, and I don’t mind trudging through some or a lot of bad to get back to the good. I’m not too particular about the ease of things, and I don’t give much thought to efficiency when it comes to abstractions in my life (or concrete things either, but that’s a different topic). While I think this is useful in some areas, I wonder if it’s the best way to go about things. Instead of having patience for inconvenience and difficulties, maybe I should have more patience for trying to cut down the inconvenience and difficulties, in my writing, in my life.