What do you do while you’re waiting for your readers to get to you about your first draft (or second or third...), your agent to get back to you about your WIP, your publisher to get back to you about your submission?
Do you use the time to write blogs, do some promotion, catch up on admin, on friends, films and books? Or do you chew your nails to the quick, pace an indentation into the carpet, dig up every weed in the garden, clean everything you can lay your hands on, climb a mountain, cook three course gourmet meals...
And does the waiting become any easier the more books you have had published? Or is it just as hard to forget that you are waiting and get on with things.
I try to get on with things, sometimes I’m very successful – my allotment will be utterly without a single weed, I will have discovered some amazing recipes, and cooked them, and several ideas will be buzzing around for the next piece of work. But sometimes I can’t. Occasionally, despite my best efforts, I’ll have turned into a complete horror to be around. So thank you to my nearest and dearest for putting up with it all. I’m hoping more experienced Sassies will tell me not to worry and that the waiting gets so much easier that you’re almost blasé about it....
And now, with recent good news, the nature of the waiting has changed. It’s infinitely better. It’s a less pressured kind of waiting, and I’ll even be able to work while I’m waiting...
9 comments:
Good luck with the waiting - and congratulations on the good news!
I get on with the next thing. Not because of any kind of virtue, but because it's preferable to tackling the cleaning (which is totally out of hand)!
I start a new book.
I hope you manage to hang in there. I'm with you - I prowl, read, walk, then try writing bits and pieces, start another book, prowl again, see if the neighbour is in for a cup of tea ... it's the not-knowing that feels even worse than someone saying your piece needs oceans of work.
The waiting definitely gets easier. Once I've sent my manuscript to my editor, I put it out of my mind completely and treat it like a holiday! I also find that this is the time when the tiny seedlings of ideas for the next book begin to emerge.
Good luck with the waiting (and the weeding).
Thanks so much, Stroppy! I will reveal the nature of the good news soon...
Anne - I actually start a couple of books, one moves forward eventually while the other sits on the backburner percolating.
Jo - know exactly what you mean!
Liz - Thank you. I will definitely try and treat some of it like a holiday, it beats cleaning and weeding, and then get back down to being focussed about work!
While I wait I seem to eat an inordinate amount of chocolate! And have on occasion been known to open a bottle of Moet or Verve. Why shouldn't one celebrate the fact that a piece of work is 'finished' and someone is reading it! Its a step closer to being a book. And if it doesn't become one, at least there's the pleasure of remembering the taste of chocolate and Moet!
Forgot to say... today's my wedding anniversary! 42 years! So bring on the chocolate and Moet!
Congratulations, Dianne!
Dianne - congratulations!! Bring on the Moet and the chocolates!
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