Waiting...

I'm rambling about writing today. More specifically, the waiting that is involved with writing. There is no other business, but maybe science, where you have to wait so long for results. Writing the book takes forever. Of course, then you have a gazillion rewrites, but that's okay because it needs to be perfect before you query. The hard part is next- waiting to hear back from an editor. Agents are usually very zippy, but once they've all said no, you move on directly to editors.

I had one editor take over two years to get back to me. The good news was that she was very upfront in the process and told me it might take that long. The others take at least three months, but more often than not, six months to a year. And that's the hard part, waiting and waiting, and you can do nothing about it. Even worse is what I call the book 2 wait. That's where I am now. I got my foot in the door and had a book published by a legit publisher. Now I have a great credit in my query letter, and you'd think it would be easier? It's not. I actually joined a group of other writers that experience depression because they can't get that second book picked up. I'm not quite at that stage, but I have gotten to the part where it is hard to write anything new because my excitement is wearing thin. I just want to hear back.

My publisher has my book right now. It is a YA fantasy that I submitted four months ago. The wait is killing me, and I know 90% of all other authors go through the same thing. Ugh. The path is so hard. Any other writer's out there have similar problems?