Overserved- Picking your Pace in Writing and Elsewhere

I went to a restaurant with my daughter earlier this evening. We were seated quickly, the server tried to take our order before we could even open the menu, much less peruse it. Had we wanted to talk about anything serious it would've been impossible because she was back at the table almost constantly. In one of the few moments when she wasn't at our table, someone else-- the manager I presume-- came and asked if there was anything we needed.

While on the surface, this is good, it felt like overkill. It seemed like we were being rushed through the whole experience, rushed to order, rushed to eat, rushed to leave.

There are times when haste makes sense, when there is a lobby full of patrons waiting to be seated, and servers need to propel each group through their meal so the next group can sit down. But this was not the case. It was just the two of us, and there were plenty of empty tables.

The experience, or rather the way that I interpretted it, was probably brought on by the servers general anxiousness that come through although she tried to hide it, and the fact I was coming off a bit of a frenzied day myself. Which was why I wanted to sit down and have a slow relaxing meal in the first place.

In the servers defense, I do recognize that finding the right pace to serve customers has to be a challenge. I've had the opposite problem as well, when it took forever to refill glasses, no one bothered to ask if the food was okay, and it took forever to bring the check. Service at the other end of the spectrum has caused me to miss busses and has otherwise thrown plans off kilter, so I guess in the grand scheme of things being overserved is preferable.

Restaurant servers aren't the only ones who need to concern themselves with pacing. Writers need to pay attention to this as well. When a story moves to slowly it starts to feel stale, and the reader winds up spending their energy trying to stay alert to finish it. When it moves too fast, it's hard for the reader to really experience the characters and nuances of they story. A story that moves too fast can give the reader the same rushed feeling that I had at the restaurant, and it may be a while before they decide to come back to your work.