Patience

A few days ago, there was a nice article in The Hindu about writing a novel.
This gentleman called Amitav Kumar has just published a book and wrote an article about what the writing was like.
It was long but interesting. The major idea I took away from it was that it requires a great amount of patience. A full evening can be spent in writing out a character sketch and you still might not be done. From where I come (where every task has to be accounted for in hours) this sounded like the height of inefficiency. But then I realized that I was missing the point.
Writing a book is not about efficiency. Its about creating a work of art. That requires time.
Since then I have started thinking that I find the idea of going through that labourious process rather interesting. Character sketches, plots, similes, metaphors, first drafts, second drafts, third drafts...... If not anything else, this process might just end up teaching me patience.
Talking about patience, I just happened to watch a chinese tea-ceremony on television. Do watch it and you would feel the tea-bag, hot water, sugar and milk powder affair is a blasphemous act.....

I should go home...