Has anyone seen Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot? It's about a group of what can only be described as misfits who are waiting for the mysterious Godot to arrive. By the end of the play, they're still waiting.
Well, sometimes it feels that writing is like that. You're always waiting for something, either it's your critique partners to come back to you with feedback, or to hear about an agent submission, alot of a writer's life seems to be about waiting. Although I admit, sometimes hearing back, especially when it's negative can be worse. I've probably mentioned this before, but I once had an agent submission practically hit me in the head on the return after I dropped in the mail slot that's how quickly it came back.
Right now it seems like I've been waiting for months to hear back from various lovely agents about my YA novel. When in reality it's only been about two months, and one of the agents may have had my partial deleted when her computer crashed.
Of course, even if you do have an agent or a contract, there's the waiting for the revisions, and the copy edits, and just when you're in despair, it all comes at once, and you're dying under the deadlines (see Jennifer Crusie's blog). My friend Marley's books won't come out until 2008. Wow, that's seems like such a long time to wait to see your baby in your hands. Can you imagine being pregnant for 2 years?
Even at my night job, there's wait time, waiting for your show to start, or the worst, waiting for your editor to start editing. Some editors are good and will edit you as you're writing. Other editors are talking to their friends via IM instead of editing your work. Oy!
Sorry, as you can tell I'm a bit stressed today.
What I need to do is just go home, do some light yoga, eat some sushi with a nice glass of wine and chill out.
Thanks for reading!
EKM
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