"It is patient faith, not instant inspiration, that shows up at the easel, the page, the piano. It is patience that doodles with the same-old-same-old, while keeping one ear cocked for the new. Patience is tolerant of creative missteps, expects rough drafts, learns from failures. "Do not fear mistakes, there are none," Miles Davis advised us.

"Even the fiery Davis had learned patience: play it again, Sam, and maybe this time it will lift off. Scales take patience, and patience takes the scales from our eyes. It is patience that allows us to see, and to be encouraged by, tiny increments of growth. It is patience that washes out the brushes thoroughly, patience that runs the spell-check over the day's work.

"Without patience, short stories are aborted because we can't see where they are going and we don't hang around to find out. Without patience, the poem is abandoned when the rhyme scheme hits a sticking spot. Without patience, the play becomes all work, and we chop off its head before it finds its legs. . . .

"Patience teaches us to bear with chop. Patience teaches us the rewards on the other side of failure. Chop is a period of creative vulnerability in which your style shifts, becomes malleable and porous — in other words, open to inspiration. Without chop, our work becomes canned, repetitive — product instead of process."