Writing Topic Tuesday – Patience Edition

Patience is an essential skill for a mature adult.  Without it we are little more than impulsive animals grabbing things and running around on whims, reacting constantly to every movement, stimuli and sensation.

Growing up, I hated fishing because it involved so much waiting, silence and staying still… I rarely caught anything and soon came to dread it completely.
  
Job hunting requires a great deal of patience.  Finding a place and position that is right for you, sending out resumes and carefully tailored cover letters, waiting for a response, getting an interview, then waiting to hear how you did on that interview, then the negotiation phase begins where you establish salary, start dates and ask questions about benefit packages.  This is the limbo that I’m in right now. Waiting to see if the company I’ve interviewed with sees me as a fit for them.  It has been a lot of waiting because the process is always a slow one with big companies, but hopefully worth the wait.

Courtesy of Romel Jacinto via Flickr

Here are a dozen topics with the theme of waiting and/or patience this week as I await a decision that has a major impact on my actions over the next several weeks:

• Do you consider yourself a patient person? Why or why not?
• What was the last thing that you had to do that required considerable patience? Describe how you remained patient despite the difficulty.
• How do you know when you are starting to get impatient?
• Describe a person or character who is impatient through actions alone.
• Waiting builds tension not only in life, but in fiction as well.  Write a scene where you make a character wait for something he or she desperately needs. Drag it out as long as you can. Dangle relief in front of him just to snatch it away from him again.
• “All commend patience, but none can endure to suffer.”  - Thomas Fuller. Thoughts?
• What happened the last time you lost your patience with someone or something?
• Have you ever waited and waited for something only to find that you shouldn’t have wasted your time? Why or why not?
• What do you do to remain patient and distract yourself from the “elephant in the room?”
• List all of the sayings that you know of that preach the benefits of patience. For example: A watched pot never boils.
• Make a list of all the things that you’ve waited for at some point in your life.
• What would your life (or a character’s life) be like if you didn’t have any patience or was incapable of it at all?