Writing almost seems like the easy part. The hard part is the way waiting sucks your will to live, and writing involves a great deal of waiting.
Get a group of writers together and that’s the dirge we will sing in four-part harmony. The waiting is a killer.
It all starts small and diffusely. You’re waiting for one of dozens of agents to respond to your query. Then it snowballs and intensifies. You’re waiting for a handful of agents to read your manuscript and offer representation.
Once you have an agent, you’re waiting for revision notes. You’re waiting for the book to be submitted to publishers. Then you’re waiting for an editor to decide whether they want to buy your book. And you’re waiting and you’re waiting.
If you should be so fortunate as to get through those hoops, you’re waiting again. For the publisher to send corrections, for the galley proofs, for someone to decide on cover art and title. Then you’re waiting for your ARCs and for the book to be released and for reviews and sales numbers and book signings and tours and your appearance on Oprah. (Don’t lie, you’re totally waiting for that.)
Even if all of that goes smoothly (and how often do things go smoothly?), you may well end up right back at the beginning of the waiting game. Waiting to finish the next book, to see if your agent can sell it, or even if your agent will represent it.
It’s a strange game and one that only a masochist would indulge in. A kind of literary mumblety-peg. Even if you win, it doesn’t mean you get to go home without a limp.
I wrote a beginning of one book… When I was younger I wanted to have my book in library. But I never finish the books I begin.. Why? Maybe I’ve not the time or I want not to continue. However I’ve written two little books when I was a child. Then I’ve written a story almost finished. Finnaly I have the big idea for a book, I’ve writting the 3 first chapter and then nothing..
(Sorry for my bad english, I’m french :D)
Aaaarrrrghhh! Patience is a virtue. Too bad it’s not one of mine. The picture you paint makes me cringe, but I know it’s the absolute truth.
I too, am playing the waiting game. An agent has a partial and I have yet to hear back. What I need to be doing is getting more queries ready to go, but I am putting it off to do another edit.
At least all that waiting should leave me time to write. Why doesn’t it work that way?
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http://thehalfofit.wordpress.com
Taku: I think that’s the “hurry up” part, where you’re pushing yourself to write and finish things, and then boom: waiting. As for why you don’t finish…lots of reasons, I suspect. Often I abandon a project if I don’t feel passionately about it or if it feels like something too overwhelming.
Thunder: It is weird how all that extra time spent waiting doesn’t seem to translate into writing time. Must. Be. Productive. Ehn!
Ahhhhhhh…… Thank you. In late September, I decided to fully commit myself to writing. Since then I have sent out a book proposal, workshop proposals, articles, etc. and there has not been much response either positive or negative – just silence.
I didn’t know what to make of it.
But the waiting is just part of it. Ok. That’s good. So I’m right where I need to be – as usual. 🙂
Thank you very much and have a great day.
Yup, Carol, welcome to the Waiting Room to Hell…
Hope you’ve got a book to read while you’re waiting. 😉
Yes, thank goodness for books. You’ve got to pass the time somehow.
AARRRGGGHHHHH…
F*** yeah.
I’ve been pretty good with it overall, but yesterday it just really hammered me, I think because I’m closer to an actual sale than I’ve ever ever been, and it could still just as easily be a no as a yes, and for whatever reason I thought I was just going to crawl out of my own skin yesterday.
Today was a little better. Don’t ask me why.
There’s not much lemonade in those waiting lemons. I work on my next projects, research market and promotion possibilities for if and when, in between trips to my “cussin'” room where I go to rant at the walls. One thing all the waiting does help – If we’re blending frustration into our prose we all have plenty of experience to translate to the page. ###
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THere’s something to be said for e-publishing – the acceptance is usually fairly quick and so is the gratification of seeing your work out in a month or two.
I remember an author asked me how long it would take to get the book they had just got contracted out onto bookshelves. I said about 18 months. “WHAT!” she said.
What is hard to understand, is that we are already preselling books releasing in August and Septemeber of ’09. It just takes a long time to lay the ground work.
I recently had my mind blown when I looked at the sales list for an agent and saw books contracted to come out in Fall 2011. A little too clearly I can imagine the authors of those books squirming in agony as they wait for their books to come out.