To Wait and Wait Some More

Writers sort of live in perpetual Groundhog’s Day. We wake up, we wait, we go to sleep, and then it starts all over again.

If you want to be published, then you’d better get used to waiting. If you can’t make peace with the waiting, it may very well drive you insane. Well, more than you already are. And if you’re a writer, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

We wait to hear back from CPs. To hear back from agents. We wait while on submission. Once the manuscript sells, we wait months to finally be able to tell the world that all our dreams have come true. That’s a tough one, not renting out a billboard and announcing it to the world. But we have to wait.

Then we wait for edits. We wait to see if our editor likes our edits. We wait for more edits, and copy edits, and blurbs.

We wait for arcs and reviews. (But we definitely don’t read them.)

We wait for release day, and reader feedback, and accolades and contentment and peace. Sometimes we wait a long time.

 

 

So if you are in the perpetual cycle of wait, what do you do in the meantime? You write something new, take a walk, enjoy someone else’s words for a while.

You don’t refresh your email fifteen times in an hour. (I have never, ever done that.)

You don’t let the waiting take over your life.

You can’t be afraid to move forward. It’s what you have to do.

So give yourself a break – you deserve it. Then write another book. And then the waiting begins all over again.