“There are two great sins from which all others spring:  impatience and laziness.”  I came across this quote by Frederick Nietzche the other day as I was wrestling with a column that just wouldn’t come out right.  Nietzche’s wise words were well-timed reminders about two pitfalls on the writer’s path.

First, impatience:  This irritating mood seizes me when I’m gripped with an idea so seemingly brilliant I can’t wait to sit down and channel it into perfect prose.  But the gap between what’s in my head and the painstaking effort it takes to get it out can be frustrating.  All too often the adrenaline rush of creativity can jam the flow.  Impatient with the time it takes to tap out my thoughts, word by word, sentence by sentence, I become fidgety.  Before long this nervous irritation becomes so distracting I lose focus.   My concentration ebbs, and the solid block of writing in my head dissolves.

Which leads me to Nietzche’s second sin:  laziness.  If I let impatience have its way with me, I become discouraged, which leads to laziness.  Abandoning the task of translating an idea into written form, I leave my desk and call a friend.  Or I worry about my kids, answer emails and, while I’m at it, read every single news story on CNN.   Anything but face the frustration of sitting at the computer, cursor blinking, and staring at sentences that seem suddenly trite and mundane.  In the grip of this mood, I walk off the job.

Nietzche didn’t offer any wise advice (at least in this quote) to counter the effects of impatience and laziness on the creative process.  But over time I’ve learned a few exercises to help deal with these distracting moods.  The best antidote to impatience, for instance, is its opposite:  patience.  Because impatience is such a bodily felt sensation, getting out of it and into a calm state is first of all a physical process.   Often what works for me is to take a body-deep, centering breath.  Or, I might do some yoga poses, go for a fast, brisk walk, or even do yard or house work.  These exercises help to shake out the kinks in my physical and mental energy field.  But naming impatience as a hindrance is also important.  Jung famously said that all haste is of the devil.  Christian mystics warned against acedia, or boredom and restless dissatisfaction.  Religious scholar Huston Smith has also written that the original word for suffering, dukkha, derives from a wagon wheel that’s slipped from its rim – a metaphor for the cranky, out-of-sorts, moodiness that can poison creativity – and life.  Sometimes nothing works but to face this demon down, and call it out for what it is – a harmful distraction.

What counters laziness is also its opposite:  work.  Getting a paragraph into shape takes as much labor as laying brick or stitching a quilt.  No matter how amazing a flash of inspiration might seem, giving it form always comes down to effort.  Writing is repetitive, it is hard on the body, it is tedious, and it taxes the mind to exhaustion.  The French writer Balzac put it this way:  “If an artist does not spring to his work as a soldier to the breach, if once within the crater he does not labor as a miner buried in the earth, if he contemplates his difficulties instead of conquering them one by one, the work remains unachieved . . . and the artist assists in the suicide of his own talent. . . . The solution of the problem can be found only through incessant and sustained work.”

When I’m able to resist the temptations of impatience and laziness, and remain faithful to the writing process through the virtues of patience and work, magic can happen.  Slowing down, rather than revving up, helps get the job done.  When I can focus this way, my restlessness fades into stillness.  Like a swimmer pushing off from the shore, I find myself moving farther out into a mysterious and inviting sea.  Diving deep and surfacing, I bring up a beautiful sentence, or two, or even three.  If I have the fortitude to stick with this day after day – even if only for an hour or two — I might be lucky enough to emerge with a well crafted article, poem, or even a chapter for a book.  It might take me longer than I thought.  I might feel as mentally tired as a professor who’s lectured for six hours, or as worn out as a waitress at the end of a long shift.  But I will also feel rewarded by a profound inner satisfaction.

For, as another old saying goes, “In your patience is your soul.”