Write While You Wait

It will probably come as a shock to most of you, but I'm still playing the waiting game. Despite missing a whole month of posts, the only news I have is more rejections. Luckily, I've developed a somewhat thick skin since the first rejections came in my life a few years ago. The hardest part is the waiting. I've lamented about this time and time and time again. Some the best advice on what to do was in Elana Johnson's "From the Query to the Call." After she walks you through a step by step process of writing an amazing query letter, she suggests the best way to pass the time is to do what you got into this process for in the first place. Write.

So that's what I've been doing. Or actually editing. I've been waiting so long I already have a draft done, read by readers, and gone through my habitual first pass of edits. I suggest writing something fun. I have one of those in the works too. (Don't talk to me about the number of projects I always have somewhere on the burners. Is it any wonder I lose my brain and forget about posting??) Write something just for the heck of it. Something that you might get done with and say, "Well, that's never going anywhere . . . but it was sure fun." Enjoy writing again, because editing and querying and such sometimes make writing feel more like a chore than something we started doing because we loved it. 

When the good friends ask me how my writing's going and what's happening--the ones who may not be writers, but they still understand that you don't just slide a manuscript out of the printer and send it off to a publisher to be bound--I don't mind answering, "Well, I'm just waiting around . . ."