The waiting is the hardest part. -- Tom Petty
Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, my pediatrician told my mother I was a patient patient. Now it may have been an icebreaker, a pun to make a pumpkin-headed, snaggletooth little girl smile, but the truth is, I’m pretty good at waiting. I’ve stood in lines without complaining, I don’t mind red lights all that much and I accept that things will happen when they happen possibly for reasons I don’t understand.
But not everybody is as good at waiting as I am. In my small
family, there are Type A personalities, people for whom waiting is akin to
torture. They twitch and shift and groan when they have to stand in long lines,
they beat their steering wheels like maniacs when they see the light go from
yellow to red and they have a difficult time accepting that the future is
uncertain. They want to know what’s going to happen at four thirty in the
afternoon on August 12, 2022.
Well, everyone has a chink in their armor and I’ve finally
found mine. Waiting. Last year, when I signed my first contract with Ellora’s
Cave, I had no idea what to expect. Within a month or so, I got my contract, my
cover art form and my cover art.
Then the waiting began. I didn’t know how long I would have
to wait but I was patient. There are a lot of authors at EC and a lot of very
busy editors. I picked a spot in the writer’s waiting room and got comfortable.
For what it’s worth, there’s good reading material in the writer’s waiting
room.
Then the worst possible thing happened. My editor flaked out
on me. As in, no word, no e-mail, just radio silence week after week, months
went by. That was hard.
Really hard.
I wondered what I should do. Should I contact someone? Was
this average wait time? Was my flaky editor lying in a ditch somewhere? Were
they trying to figure out a way to tell me they’d reconsidered my contract and
didn’t want to publish me after all? Did I suck? Should I find the nearest
cliff and jump off, saving myself the shame and embarrassment?
I thought I was going to lose my mind. Suddenly, the expert
at waiting was wigging out. It wasn’t pretty, folks. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think. I couldn't write.
Finally, the Editor-in-Chief contacted me and straightened
everything out. I got reassigned a new editor, a worlds better editor and it all
made sense. I might have had to wait but the wait paid off. I ended up getting
a better editor in the long run.
Then came the wait for my first edits. Yup, more waiting.
Back to the writer’s waiting room.
Finally, I got my edits. I had some work to do. So I got out
my corkboard, my index cards, Post-Its and tacks and went to work
brainstorming. I filled in holes and explained things. I made my story even
better. I sent in the new and improved version.
And waited some more. Yes, more. The agony!
In my sleepless lunacy, I stumbled across some
finely-written blog posts about writers and the tortures of waiting. They say
some wise things and they say them much better than I ever could. But I gleaned
something from them, from the experience.
While waiting, don’t wait.
I know, Zen as hell, right?
But I’m serious. Let it go and go on. Keep writing. Forget
about it. Keep your head down and stay busy. If you think you’ve waited a fair
amount of time, be polite and touch base with your editor or publisher or
whoever you think holds your fate by the shorthairs. If you’re worried you’ll
offend them, just admit you’re new to the whole process and you don’t know what
to expect.
In short, don’t drive yourself crazy.
Ever tried to scratch your nose in a straightjacket?
It’s damn near impossible.
The wait for my Ellora’s Cave debut is almost over. My
editor e-mailed me March 31st and told me my release date. “Kilting Me Softly”
will be available on May 10th, 2013.
