The Writer’s Waiting Room
Last week I read Chase Jarvis describe a pattern he’s seen hundreds of times in both authors and screenwriters: creatives who want to hand over the keys. The same behavior shows up whether you’re writing novels or scripts. It reminded me of something I’ve been noticing for years but hadn’t quite put into words. Writers have developed a peculiar relationship with control that’s poisoning their chances of success.
The pattern goes like this: A writer spends months or years crafting their work in isolation. For novelists, it’s polishing every sentence and agonizing over character arcs. For screenwriters, it’s perfecting dialogue and structure. Then, suddenly, they want nothing to do with what happens next. Authors look for agents and publishers. Screenwriters hunt for managers and production companies. Everyone’s looking for someone to “take it from here.” It’s as if they believe their only job was to write the words.
What makes this pattern particularly dangerous is how reasonable it seems. After all, isn’t this how the entertainment industry works? Isn’t this why we have agents, publishers, and production companies? But this view misunderstands something fundamental about how stories find their audience, whether on page or screen.
I noticed this most clearly when talking to successful writers about their early days. Almost none of them simply “handed over the keys.” Instead, they treated their story’s journey as an extension of the creative process. They didn’t wait in the waiting room — they were in the operating room, hands deep in the messy work of building connections. The novelists who succeeded were often the ones personally reaching out to independent bookstores. The screenwriters who broke in were the ones finding creative ways to get their scripts into the right hands.
The confusion seems to stem from a misreading of what’s actually in our control. Writers often act like there’s a clear dividing line: writing is in our control, success is not. So they focus entirely on the writing, then wait and hope. It’s like a farmer who spends all their time perfecting a single seed, then plants it and prays for rain.
But this gets things backward. While we can’t control whether any individual agent reads our manuscript or whether a specific producer champions our script, we can control how many people encounter our work. We can’t control if a particular publishing house or production company says yes, but we can control how many we approach. We’re confusing the success rate with the number of attempts.
One successful screenwriter I know put it this way: “I realized I was waiting for permission to succeed. I was treating the business side like it was someone else’s job, then getting frustrated when that mysterious someone wasn’t doing it well enough.”
What’s particularly interesting about this pattern is how it shows up even in writers who are otherwise quite confident. They’ll assert strong creative control over their work, then suddenly become passive when it’s time to share it. This happens whether they’re writing books or scripts. It’s as if they believe their authority ends at the last page of their manuscript or screenplay.
The alternative isn’t to become a full-time marketer or producer. That’s another false choice that keeps writers stuck. Instead, it’s about recognizing that connecting with the right people is part of writing, not separate from it. The same creativity that goes into crafting scenes can go into finding ways to share them.
The good news is that this pattern, once recognized, is fairly easy to break. Writers who catch themselves waiting can ask a simple question: “What small action could I take right now to move my story forward?” The emphasis on small is important — we’re not talking about landing a huge publishing deal or getting signed by a major agency. We’re talking about steady, consistent outreach.
The really curious thing about the waiting room is that it feels safe, but it’s actually the riskiest place to be. Every day spent waiting is a day when your work isn’t finding its readers or viewers. Every moment spent hoping someone else will take care of everything is a moment when you could be building direct connections with decision-makers.
In the end, the waiting room is a symptom of a larger misunderstanding about what writing is in the modern world. It’s no longer enough to just write the words, whether you’re crafting novels or screenplays. The good news is that once writers understand this, they often find that the skills they’ve developed crafting stories serve them well in sharing them too. They just have to be willing to get up from that waiting room chair and get to work.
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