I have spent a collective eight years, three months, seven days, and thirteen minutes waiting for someone else to give me and my projects the green light.

Don't quote me on that number, it's a rough estimate. But it's a well-educated guess. As creators, we are often waiting for someone else to say "yes" to our ideas. We wait for editors to respond to pitches, residencies to send us an invitation, collaborators to move a project forward, and the shadowy powers that be to declare when we are finally worthy. 

Instead of creating, we wait. Instead of declaring, we wait. Instead of adapting, we wait. Because of some small, far-away chance that we might be chosen—maybe that client calls or that assignment is approved or that HR manager remembers you exist—we keep a wide-open calendar. 

Hey everyone, we say. Can't you see I'm completely available?

But there's another way to work.

You must create, and focus on what you can control. Regardless of your industry, regardless of the gatekeepers, regardless of your own chatty inner monologue. Even when you feel like you're stuck, there is always something in your power to do.

Here is your guide for creating over waiting.

1. You Must Believe You're in Charge of Filling Your Days

Gone are the periods of waiting for someone else to add events to your calendar. Keep reaching out to connections or pursuing opportunities, but right after you plant those seeds, it's time to move on to something else. The hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (or whenever you work best) are a gift. Instead of praying that someone will respond or give you approval to move forward, turn that wild and powerful energy into a fiery laser beam aimed at your own growth. Learn an esoteric skill. Revise the structure of your  side gigs. Write down three YA book ideas swirling in your head. Launch the Shark Tank-worthy product. Mold the quirky project. Create a useful workshop. Make any decision. Fill your day.

2. You're No Longer Allowed to Make Leaps of Logic

A quiet whisper lives under all of our waiting. This dialogue is coded with "please." Please respond to this pitch. Please give me feedback. Please say I am on the right track. Being polite is essential; we should strive to be kind and empathetic creators. Please keep saying "please" to your collaborators. 

But you must untangle your polite and insistent requests from your own worthiness as a person and a creator. It's easy for an email exchange to balloon in your mind into an assessment of your ability. "They haven't responded for two weeks," turns into "My ideas are bad," which turns into "Why am I bothering to try anyway?!" 

Remember that someone else's silence is not a statement about you. Silence is often simply a reflection of a busy life. (Because we all have busy lives.) Waiting and fixating on a response you can't control will eat your creativity alive. Don't let it.

3. You Must Replace Refreshing With Building

When we wait, we drift. When we drift, we lose sight of what we want. When we lose sight of what we want, we continue to wait. During this chain of events, we give away our time—our single most valuable resource—to the three nemeses of creativity: Inbox Refreshing, Social Checking, and Numbers Obsessing. 

I visited my inbox 46 times today. I wrote zero pages. Checking my email, I sweetly lied to myself, is important! I'm waiting to hear back about crucial things: confirmations, go-aheads, fresh information. But I can get honest and ask, Do I need any of that information to do my important work today? The answer is clear: No, I do not.

Pulling the slot machine handles of our inbox and social media accounts feels like work. It feels like progress. Yet refreshing, checking, and obsessing doesn't make the message arrive sooner, or your stats climb higher. These nemeses of creativity make you fixate on scraps. But you'll never be satisfied with scraps. You're too hungry. The only way to be satisfied is to create your own buffet.

In the words of filmmaker Mark Duplass, "the cavalry isn't coming." 

And the gatekeepers are probably napping. 

And the promised land you hoped to find—the one full of stability, praise, and instant success—isn't a place you arrive. The promised land is the place you already are, the one brimming with endless potential, the one where you're in charge.

Start, post, plan, gather, act, engage. Above all, resist waiting. You were born to create.