Waiting

The road to publication involves a lot of waiting. You write your stuff, send it off and you wait. And wait. And wait. If you'er like me, and not the most patient person on earth, the waiting can be enough to make you snaky. I hate waiting. Just ask anyone who has had the misfortune of traveling on public transport with me! Waiting for things feels like wasted time, and I just don't have enough time to be wasting it.

So what do you do? It's often difficult to move on to something else while waiting to hear about your current work. But in reality, that is the only ting you can do. Send off that query or story or novel and try not to think about it too much. Get your head down and work on your next project. The, if the news is good, you'll have something to follow up with. If the news is bad, well, you have something else to throw out there.

I always try to have at least two or three things on the go. I tend to get stuck on projects and need to step away from them for a while before I can go back and find my way with them. This is also handy in the waiting game.

When waiting gets really frustrating, it's when you don't know how long you might need to wait. For my short stories, I use Duotrope's submission tracker because it tells you how long on average you will wait to get a response. Unfortunately, they are not always right.. I have one story that has been out over 100 days. The average response time listed was 68 and I queried them after 80 only to be told they had a lot to get through. I'm still waiting.

And that's for a 3000 word short story. Think what it's like for the people who have to wade through novel submissions. It's no wonder it can take 6 months or more to get a response. But use that time. Write another book while you wait. Otherwise you will have wasted your time. And quite possibly have gone insane.