It's okay to take your time

you're never "too old" but you have start

When I was in high school, one of my teachers had us come up with a list of goals we wanted to accomplish in the next 5 years. We got to choose the type of paper and laminate it. It’s definitely because of the lamination that I thought it was important enough to tape up in my bedroom. It’s still up there now:

yeah i was a nerd

Some of these goals were achieved within a year. Some were bound by the deadline of graduation. 5 years after I created this list, I had done everything on it except #2: finish working on and publish a book. As each year came and went, I began to feel that I had hit my expiration date on this goal. In my belief system, it was already too late for me. Besides, I had no idea how publishing a book even worked, and you know, it felt safer to just not try at all, so I didn’t taste the bitterness of failure.

Thinking back to it, I loved writing, but I had not loved it enough to take it seriously. I didn’t know how to commit. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, and I only did it when I felt like it. I applied to creative writing classes, and when I was rejected, I folded over. It was easier to think that I didn’t have what it took, rather than recognize that there was a steep path towards my goal that I was afraid of embarking on. To date, that’s one of my biggest regrets. Just because I was not ready, did not mean I should have stopped trying.

The reason I started again? I read an author’s post about her agenting and publication journey. I discovered that she was only in college, and it lit a competitive fire in me. Normally, I discourage against comparison, but in this case, seeing someone younger and not so dissimilar from me in background accomplish this made me feel like I could do it, too. Reading that post flipped a switch. It listed out exactly what I needed to do to get published: write a book, revise, write a query, query agents, get agented. Suddenly, publishing did not seem like some ambiguous aspiration. There were clear steps to get there. I did not need to be “of age” or have a set of qualifications to do it, the way you do for a normal job. If I kept waiting to be “ready,” I would never be.

For a while, I was jealous and anguished. I was jealous because maybe that could’ve been me! I was anguished because I could’ve been writing and building up a repository of failures and learning and words instead of stagnating. But that was the kick in the ass I needed. I got to work. I wrote with the intention of completing a book, no matter how sucky it was. I researched queries. I got serious. All the while, I nursed the doubt that it was already too late for me. At the time, I was writing YA. I had always believed that I would publish in YA because that was what I primarily read. I used to think that it would be great to publish YA while I was in high school or college because when else would I be an authority on the YA voice than when I, myself, was a young adult? Writing it as an older, post-college grad, I felt like I’d missed the train. I was also reading way less YA at this point, but I was hesitant to dip my toes in the waters of adult fiction. I didn’t know if I had the skill or maturity to write it.

If you have read past newsletters, you know I got my agent with my YA. That failed to sell, and my next project was adult fiction about a group of women who commit a heist at a wedding. I felt lots of fear and imposter syndrome as I was writing it, and sometimes I would spiral when I thought about this being yet another book that wouldn’t sell and having to start all over again. But greater than that fear was the determination to write this story. It became Women of Good Fortune, which published in March 2024.

I should have been satisfied after that. After far longer than I could’ve anticipated, I had completed my list. And yet, I still constantly feel like I’m falling behind.

When I moved back to San Francisco last year, I felt like Rip Van Winkel. Many of my friends from college were homeowners, married, planning for kids, while I was just re-entering the workforce again, except with more joint pain. At work, I discovered that people with far more seniority than me were actually not that far away in age, or sometimes even younger. I used to take a lot of pride in being the youngest in a group, but I was beginning to reach this inflection point where I was no longer considered young. Now, I see posts about “what I learned in my twenties” and realize I’m not the audience for those sorts of lists anymore. Someone, please link me to the “what to avoid in your thirties” list, though.

While struggling through my second book, I watched people from my debut class sell second, even third books. I was in the middle of a complete rewrite while others had their second books already publishing. My first book made me experience imposter syndrome, and my second one drove me to the edge of madness. This book has been a killer to write. It’s been dragging me in its wake since 2023, and nothing about writing it has been easy. Also, it seems to be a lightning rod for bad luck, something I’ll write about once I actually turn this thing in. In the beginning, I raced to finish it. I wanted to have it in the bag and work on my third book, so that I could keep pace with literally everyone else (or so it seemed). But as I went through relentless rounds of edits, I realized there was no point in hurrying. I might be able to pump out thousands of words, but they would lack heart and intention. I needed to take my time, not just satisfy a contractual obligation. If that meant spending 2 hours on one page, then that was what I had to do.

If you race time, you’ll always lose. Time will run on, and it will never tire. There will always be someone younger, and brighter, and more talented. Look at the chess grandmasters. You keep thinking they can’t get any younger, and yet, they do. I have mostly left social media, so I get fewer reminders of this, but I still feel that latent anxiety when I see others hitting milestones. To me, milestones are things you can point to and say, look, I wasn’t wasting my time. They’re visible, easy for the rest of the world to understand and admire. But they are blips in the long stream of life. What matters more is everything that happens in between. The thinking, the deleted words, the showing up.

All I need to do is look at my 5-year list. It may have taken me more than 5 years, but I checked everything off, things that I perceived as big and difficult enough to type them out on a laminated piece of pretty paper. Few of those things would have happened if I had withdrawn from the race early. Sometimes, I get frustrated at myself for how long it takes me to do certain things, like come up with an apt synonym or the right way to express a feeling. But that is the beauty of the struggle. And the reward when I get it right is immeasurable.

So, here is a reminder: take your time to get it right. It is not the speed with which we complete things that matters, but the time we spend in the race. ✦

Something I wrote today:

She has spent longer missing him than being with him.