Epiphanies Come From Waiting
The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable ingredient for the creative mind. You need patience, to let your ideas transform into what they could be.
When writing, it’s easy to be fooled by the allure of immediate results — achieving that perfect draft on the first try or expecting a flood of inspiration to lead you to your magnum opus overnight. Yet, beneath the surface of great creations lies a fundamental, often overlooked virtue: patience.
Writing isn’t just a waiting game; rather, it’s a dance with time. Sometimes you sprint, and sometimes you sit and wait, allowing ideas to incubate and mature until they reach their full potential. The first draft — when you’re paralyzed by self-doubt and lack direction — is the impossibly hard kernel. It's tempting to dive into immediate revisions or discard the entire thing in frustration. But the magic happens when you step away and let your work rest. Take a walk. Store the draft in a drawer and forget about it. Then, come back a week later and see how you feel about your writing. Maybe the hard kernel will have softened. After waiting, it might open with ease.
Resist the urge to immediately critique or revise. The subconscious needs time to work, and that period of waiting is when you make the most important connections. Waiting leads to breakthroughs that seem to come from nowhere.
You may have already learned writing techniques like POP Writing, keeping a reliable note-taking system, or indulging in your unlimited breadth of curiosity. While these play a role in creating something great, you also need patience. Embrace the moments that feel slow, when you feel like there is no progress happening at all. A great piece of writing requires that you take pause, because the epiphanies you’re searching for come from waiting. Patience is the deliberate, powerful choice to allow your writing — the extension of your very self — to mature into its fullest possible form. Patience is the water that softens the toughest seed of revelation, unveiling the fruits of truth and beauty within you.
