The Nerves of the Waiting Game

Any writer who has ever been in the querying trenches knows of the harrowing ordeals. Ordeals of patience, which when you're waiting for a response to a query, you don't have much of.

It gets worse once you send out partials or fulls. Then you have to wait even longer. And by that point the ever torturous seed of hope has taken root in your chest. "They liked the beginning," you tell yourself. "They saw something in my idea. Maybe, just maybe, they'll like the whole book."

I've recently reentered the trenches and I know this feeling. Upon entering #pitmad I got a few requests to see pages so I sent them out. I also sent out a few queries. I was fine. Playing it cool. I wasn't going to get as freaked out as I did the FIRST time I started querying. Whatever happens, happens.

But hope does wonders to the calm mind. I was sitting in History of English class when I got an email. Casually I checked to see who it was from. One of the agents I sent my pages to.

They wanted a full.

Apologies to my History of English professor because my mind short circuited the moment I read those words. She was still talking but I watched her lips move and heard gibberish. All attempts to process the lecture were in vain.

Suddenly, I've gone crazy. Checking my email a million times a day, hovering over query tracker and twitter. I'm a ball of nerves.

Last night I had a dream I got an offer of representation. After which I started wondering if it was a dream. My dream family said it was and I started arguing with them about why it wasn't a dream, even though I knew it in the back of my mind (This dream also included space school but I don't need to get into that). It was kind of depressing to wake up the next morning.

The point is, every writer has been there. When you look for an agent you WANT it so bad and you hope and pray and pray some more that you might finally find the right one. You want someone to see something in your work.

You want to be an author. No, you NEED it.

Keep hoping and dreaming and never lose that edge. The dream is what keeps us going. But also keep calm in the face of rejection. Accept it. Busy yourself with other projects. Go outside every once and awhile. Breathe. Its going to be okay.

When the time is right, your book will find a home and you will see it in print. It could be this book or a few books from now. Heck, you could get the call tomorrow. But we all have a lot of life to live and a lot of time to live it.

Now if I could just take my own advice, I'll be dandy!

-Aimee