Why Patience Is a Publishing Superpower—From Someone Who Took 20 Years to Find Publication

It’s been two decades. And I regret none of it.

This spring my debut, In the Great Quiet, reaches readers—but the road to publication stretched 20 years. In 2006, I began my first novel, whose title I cannot even remember. Since then, I’ve unwaveringly sought traditional publishing: Waking at dawn to draft, enduring the valleys, grasping tenacity and resilience, pouring 12 years into a novel that didn’t sell.

(18 Tips to Keep the Words Flowing.)

None of that time was wasted.

Often, writing advice frames perseverance as admirable: Surviving rejection, withstanding silence. But the long road is not passive. It’s formative. The stretches that feel stalled are often where a writer is built.

Patience isn’t idle—it’s a writer’s most powerful tool.

In the early aughts, while walking across my university campus, sunlight flickering through maple leaves, an image smacked into me: a woman, lost in another age, caught in gripping historical circumstances. I knew I must tell her story. And so, over the next decade I drafted her novel.

Yes, I said decade.

Ten years to draft that manuscript. Two more to revise. I read over a hundred history books, studied craft relentlessly. I learned how I like to shape a sentence, how I like to tell a story.

And then, her story didn’t sell.

I spent 12 years immersed in that world and fell utterly, wholeheartedly in love. Her narrative is woven into my life. Not finding a home for that manuscript was debilitating. It forced me to confront why I wrote at all—and to decide whether or not I would keep going.

When I look back, I don’t see a decade of wayward choices or failure. That novel made me into the writer I am today. It taught me stamina. It showed me how to architect a world. I learned to kill darlings, and I found my voice.

The long wait didn’t debilitate a writer. It shaped one.

Tip: Let your books teach you.

Trust your own timeline. Don’t compare your writing journey with someone else. Return your gaze to your own page. I recognize now that perhaps I wasn’t ready to write that book. Twenty years after first glimpsing that woman of the past, I now have a plan to rebuild her novel. It only took me two decades.

Time. Sometimes you just need perspective.

Making peace with slow seasons isn’t only part of the publishing timeline. It’s one of our most powerful editorial tools. When stuck—or forcing a manuscript—my instinct is to push harder. To muscle through, solve the plot hole, polish the sentence. To persist. But not every problem yields to pressure. Some resolve through distance.

When grappling with an element or unsure why my book’s not working, I have learned to close my laptop. Step into the woods behind my home. Take a shower, laugh with my family, crack open a new book, and let the story quietly work in the background.

This may sound mystical, but it’s neurological. When we step away, patterns form beneath conscious thought. What feels like inactivity is actually deep work.

Tip: Schedule rest into revision.

After you finish a draft, plan some distance before you edit. Rotate projects. Read widely. Your subconscious keeps working, when you step away from the page. The pause isn’t laziness—it’s strategy.

Patience is not passive. You can find a way to use time. Allow your draft to sit. Let it simmer. Reflect. Sleep.

Think of your process as crop rotation. I have projects at different stages—researching, revising, copy edits. If one grows stubborn, if I become a bit lost, I lay the story down. And I turn to another. When you wait a season, the soil restores.

Patience is not what you do when you fail—it’s what makes success possible. Often, solutions arrive unexpectedly: while driving, folding laundry, playing board games. A new perspective comes, not because I forced my novel, but because I allowed it space.

After signing a publishing deal, I continued to encounter expanses of stillness. Publishing pulses to the rhythm of intense deadlines followed by silence. Two weeks to edit. Then a month before the following round. Your manuscript sent off into the void, covers in development, marketing plans vague and beyond sight. Much of the process exists beyond a writer’s control.

The pace can be daunting—but I chose to find solace in the quiet seasons. To consider those periods not a stretch of darkness but a place to breathe.

Tip: Fill the waiting seasons.

Research your next project, read a craft book, write some poetry, take a vacation. Learn to harness the lull. I found peace drafting when publicity and marketing felt all-consuming. Sure, I was antsy. I wrestled with impatience. But I tugged on my hiking boots, shoved out my back door, and walked through the forest. Watched the clouds, allowed my mind to wander—lived in the moment.

When your manuscript returns to you, your creative well is now full. You can begin.

Let’s revisit my timeline. In 2013, Minnie—In the Great Quiet’s main character—arrived in a startling, visceral moment. But I was immersed in my first novel. Minnie had to pause.

For years.

We often hear that if you don’t seize an idea, it vanishes. That hasn’t been my experience. Minnie waited. She didn’t dim. And when I was ready to return to her, she vibrantly, explosively came to life on the page.

Tip: Notice ideas but don’t rush them.

Ideas will endure.

If you must hush a story, note your initial spark of a character, sketch an outline, and recognize that sometimes you must become the writer your novel requires. If I had written Minnie’s story earlier, In the Great Quiet would not be the same book. I did not yet have ease with my prose, confidence in my structural vision, and the wisdom to write a character with her emotional nuance. The circumstances in my life, those years that I drafted, also carved into my manuscript. But that’s another tale.

The timing wasn’t late. It was precise.

The narrative in publishing often focuses on speed. But velocity doesn’t sustain a writer throughout the decades.

Steadiness does.

Resilience. Continuing to revise when no one is watching. The tenacity to return again to the page, after another round of rejection. The discipline to lay your story down, instead of forcing a solution. The humility to accept that growth takes time.

The years weren’t empty—they built me. In that slow valley, where I learned to fall, stumble, and rise again, I reckoned with who I was as a writer. If I hadn’t suffered the long wait, I wouldn’t have been able to write In the Great Quiet.

This spring, as my debut finally settles into readers’ hands, I feel that familiar tug of anticipation. Even now, there’s uncertainty. But I am no longer unsettled by uneven terrain.

I remind myself, patience isn’t passive. It’s active.

When choices feel out of control, or I lose my way, I take a deep breath. Pause. And recognize that getting lost is an important part of the journey. If you’re in a season that feels slow, remember: Growth happens even when the page is quiet. You are not stuck. You are being molded.

The long road is not a detour from your writing life.

It is your writing life.

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