The Art (and Chaos gardening) of Being Patient as a Writer

I sometimes think that being a writer requires the patience of a bonsai enthusiast, the endurance of past runrig crofters, and the optimism of someone who plants a seed and fully believes it will become a oak by Tuesday. let’s face it, the amount of happy seedlings my kids have brought home through Primary school only for me to enthusiastically over water them or neglectfully forget to water them again. I failed every sunflower. Feral the Elder’s strawberries live only because I have not been involved.

Unfortunately, patience is not something that comes naturally to me. I’m not quick-tempered, exactly, but I do like things to… happen. Preferably yesterday. I’ve thought it, I can picture every stage and therefore I want to be done. Much like the current state of the “Garage Project” aherm. Less of that, back to our onions… Somehow, here I am, in a profession built on waiting.

Every idea I’ve ever had has taken months to germinate, usually longer than I want it to. A little spark arrives, and I immediately want it to become a fully formed plot with thematic depth and beautifully flawed characters by next Wednesday. Instead, it sits quietly, composting in the back of my mind until it’s ready. Fidra, my lovely labradoodle helps me a lot with that, taking me out for good walks, which is where many of my best ideas formulate. I plot first in my head, then in a notebook, then on my laptop, then the skeleton gets fleshed out, then I change bits, I cut paragraphs out of one bit and stick them elsewhere, amputate them entirely, move whole chapters about, but eventually, it’s done. Ish. I leave it for a while at this point, often distracted by some other shiny thing, maybe this blog (yes, I do have a draft mulching just now), or poems, short stories, most often I’ve got caught up in life, the rhythms of having a busy household.

Then come the rewrites. And more rewrites. Then the day I realise I have rewritten the rewrite. A tentative showing to a trusted reader… more rewrites!

Eventually, a novel is done: yes, I’ve finished my second novel, The Seal’s Tide, and it’s currently out on submission. This is the part no one warns you about. Writing a book yourself? Writing requires patience, certainly, but you’re in control. Submitting it? That’s where patience earns its stripes.

Even when a manuscript lands in the right hands, the process can take months: six, sometimes more. And that’s assuming it finds the right person early. Often, it’s a longer road. You have to keep circling back to hope, like checking on a shy houseplant: Are you still alive? Do you need water? Encouragement? A new pot? Fresh soil? Should I sing to it? Ok, so I’ve never sung to my manuscript but hopefully you get the gist. You try to talk about it just enough to try and pique interest, but not so much as to come across as desperate, or, in my case, I worry about losing the “spark” for it.

Meanwhile, in Book Three… While that’s going on, I’ve just started my third novel. Yes, there are family secrets (when are there not?), but this one has a slightly different vibe. We’re going to be unwrapping those secrets during a snowed-in Christmas in a Highland glen, the kind of setting where emotions simmer, old truths thaw, and my characters find each other across the years. If you’ve read or heard some of my short stories, you’ll know I like to dabble with the supernatural so right now, Fidra, the labradoodle, is helping me to work out whether a Christmas ghost – of sorts – fits. We’ll see. I’m excited about it. But again, it’s early days. It’s germinating. A story stretching politely before the long run.

I also write short stories: I have two completed collections (I’ll tell you more about those another time, because I think you’ll be interested) and I’ve started a third. I hope to find a home for them but, erm… I’m quite lazy and impatient about submitting work. I have a lot of work on my laptop, sort of incarcerated in the cloud, just waiting to be set free and to find a home. And of course, I have poems. I have a couple of pamphlets about which I have some exciting news for you soon, and a third being pulled together.

One of the ways I cope with all this waiting is by thinking of my writing life like a garden. I am not a gardener, to be honest so this is possibly not the best-grounded allegory, but we rarely see the growth happening, right? Let’s plough on (ba doom doom tsh) It never moves as fast as I think it should. But beneath the surface, things are shifting. Roots are forming. Shoots are gathering courage. Suddenly it all pops up, and hopefully looks effortless.

Ok, so my writing life behaves very much like a chaotic garden. I intend to be a diligent gardener, but half the time I’m just hoping things don’t get eaten by slugs, the lawn is a mess and I’ve not got round to planting up one planter. It does work somehow: some ideas arrive like wildflowers, blown in on the wind when I’m not paying attention. A line overheard on the school run, the colour of the sky on a too-early morning, the coat on the canalside wall (check me, referencing a previous post!). They settle in their own time. I never know which of these will take root, and which will just sit stubbornly on the surface, refusing to sprout no matter how much I glare at them.

Other ideas need proper planting, the digging, the compost, the muttering as you read the seed packet twice and think, “Really? Thatdeep?” These are the stories that need deliberate tending. My novels tend to fall into this category. They require patience, revisiting, pruning, and more than one moment where I consider ripping the whole thing up and putting gravel down instead.

There are also the perennials: themes and obsessions that come back year after year no matter what I do. Family secrets, loss, belonging, complicated women doing their best in tricky circumstances. These pop up like hardy shrubs: sometimes in places I didn’t expect, but always recognisable. I’ve stopped trying to fight them. They’re part of the soil at this point.

Then there are the seasons.

Even when nothing is visibly happening, I write in seasons, I’ve spoken about this before: the long post Christmas stage of winter stretches of doubt, the “why isn’t anything growing” weeks, usually spent in drafts and plots, something is quietly shifting under the surface. Roots spreading. Ideas thickening. The slow strengthening of a stem. I’ve learned (or I’m trying to learn, slowly, like moss) that this is part of the work. You can’t rush a season. The imagination has weather of its own.

Autumn and early winter are, for me, the cosy writing months: settling in, layering jumpers, and disappearing into long prose with the same enthusiasm I apply to a good stew. Spring is when plotting starts to happen: little shoots of structure poking through. Summer… well, summer is for maintenance and wildflowers. A bit of trimming, a bit of sighing, a bit of watering the parts I forgot about, enthusiasm for poems and short stories.

And yes, sometimes an entire draft composts itself and becomes the fertiliser for something new. That’s both painful and extremely efficient of it.

But the biggest truth is this: a garden grows whether or not you’re watching it every minute, and so does a writing life. Even when patience feels impossible. Even when I’m waiting to hear from agents. Even when I’m starting something new and don’t know what shape it’ll become. Growth is happening.

And you might have to be patient with me too. There are stories sprouting. Poems budding. News quietly rooting itself before it’s ready to bloom. I promise I’ll share them as soon as they flower.

Everything grows, eventually. Just… not always when I want it to.