I was reading a work by the great writer Stefan Zweig. In it, he recounts a youthful conversation with an older and wiser friend. The friend was encouraging him to travel, believing that the experience would help broaden and deepen Zweig’s writing. Like me, Zweig believed he had to write right now and that he didn’t have the time to wait – he was feeling the urgency of a first-time writer too. “Literature is a wonderful profession,” the friend explained patiently, “because haste is no part of it. Whether a really good book is finished a year earlier or a year later makes no difference.”
Art can’t be hurried. It must be allowed to take its course. It must be given its space – and can’t be rushed or checked off a to-do list on the way to something else.
– from “Perennial Seller” by Ryan Holiday
