PASSION PROJECT: Waiting for the Results

Editor Lea Beresford implores us lovely writers to get used to The Wait.

Patience is a virtue. This is what I tell my dog every time he tries to exit the elevator first, bowling over our neighbors. “No” or “heal” would probably work better. He doesn’t get it, and most humans don’t either, including me. I am one of the most impatient people in a very impatient city. I hate lateness. I have no willpower. I want what I want when I want it, and I get pissy when I have to wait for anything—promotions, phone calls, ice cream. I mutter under my breath when you are strolling slowly, one of four people walking abreast on the sidewalk . I am not above honking my horn in the suburbs when you mistake a stop sign for a stop light.*

Waiting to hear big news—after applying for grad school, interviewing for a job, peeing on the pregnancy test—is perhaps the hardest time to practice patience. But it’s also the most important time to do so.

You’ve drafted your cover letter and polished your excerpt. You’ve formatted the email the best you could and attached a photo of yourself. There’s nothing else you can do now—it’s out of your hands.

Get used to it.

There’s a lot of waiting in the publishing industry. You send out dozens of queries and wait for busy agents to get around to reading yours. Once you’ve landed an agent, she sends your baby out to publishers and you wait, holding your breath, for word of interest. Finally! Good news! Someone likes it! But will her editorial board
agree? Will she be able to make an offer? Better wait and see.

Your agent has accepted an offer on your behalf and the contracts department of a publishing house is drafting the contract. You will receive the first portion of your advance on signing. Where the %@*# is that contract? You want to sign it! You want your money! Well, that contract is circulating to a long list of people and must be
approved by each one. Oops! The associate publisher is out of the office on vacation for two weeks. Hold tight. Well, now she’s back and has approved, but the business manager is out sick and won’t be able to approve the contract until he recovers from gout. Oh man.

So you’ve finally signed the contract and your first advance check is in your hot little hand. Once you deliver the completed manuscript, you want to know what your editor thinks about it. It's also time for the check that's due on delivery and acceptance. But she’s up to her eyebrows in other manuscripts that came in before yours. She'll read it by the end of next month. But ALL YOU WANT TO KNOW IS IF SHE LIKESIT!

She doesn’t know! She hasn’t had time to read it yet!

Patience is a virtue.

Get used to the wait, lovely writers. Get used to the gut-swimming, head-pressurizing, eye-twitching nerves that come along with waiting to hear the fate of the words you wrote with everything you had.

If you can, use this pent-up energy to your advantage. Write the next sample chapter. Outline your next idea. Pen a juicy blog post that might just go from blog-to-book. Learn all that you can about the publishing industry so you know what's going on behind the scenes... while you're waiting. Draft your acceptance speeches for various awards that you are sure to win in the future and take pleasure in not thanking the people who are making you wait.

Then grit your teeth, stomp out your frustrations, and make sure you’re first in line for an ice cream cone. Or else.

Impatiently yours,
Lea

*I didn’t realize what a horrible person I am until I started writing this!

Tags: #publishing, Amanda Johnson Moon, Lea Beresford, Passion Project, blog to book

0 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of She Writes to add comments!

Join She Writes

Comment by Mary Keating on August 11, 2010 at 3:14pm: Ani - I love your Montana spunk and positive slant! Perhaps that is why I am married to a wonderful guy - born and raised in Montana. I do believe you get what you expect, and good things come from good things. Thanks for sharing such a positive note and enjoy the Big Sky Country!

Comment by Ani Bell on August 11, 2010 at 2:21pm: I love Lea! Love your writing style and the honesty. I gotta confess, though -- I'm not feeling impatient at all about the contest! I feel certain that I'm going to be a finalist -- and if I'm not, then something even better will result from the process of entering. I tell my coaching clients all the time -- you get what you expect. And I expect to live a charmed life, I expect for things to unfold for me with ease, I expect seas to part! If there's anything to feel impatient about, I guess it'd be to see what incredible thing is going to happen next! YES!

Comment by Alle C. Hall on August 10, 2010 at 3:40pm: For several years now, I have gone public with my excitement over rejections. "Crazy," you say. Like a fox, baby. I cannot tell you how many times I open a rejection to realize I have completely forgotten that I submitted. Generally, my response is, "Ouch. Oh, well, Now, stop annoying me because I can't wait to get out my "where to sent next" list.

Of course, that is for over-the-transom subs. That unhindered blase can't compete with the excitement and dream-like state about sending off the rest of a book manuscript an agent requested after reading my query. But Lea's philosophy holds solid, even if the grade is steeper: find the next agent. Get the next sub in the mail.

Actually, I do it in lumps of five: five of whatever go out. List of next five goes on deck. Start working on something else. One of the first five comes back, one from on deck goes out. THEN I take sometime and have my feelings. I can just as well have my feelings with the next on the list already in circulation.

The Passion Project proved the theory, if I judge by my comfort level. Last spring, I entered a fiction piece in a contest. It took me a few days to stop obsession. (I am human.) As soon as I zapped out my Passion Project entry, ka-boom, it hit me that I had only two more weeks to hear about that contest. And I already know where the project is going when I get my "no."

"When," say you. Yes. When.

Comment by Lisa Preston on August 10, 2010 at 2:10pm: This post was a well-placed kick to the rear.

Comment by Sally Kohn on August 10, 2010 at 1:42pm: Dear Lea, thanks for the advice. I took accidentally read your post too quickly and ended up taking my frustrations out on an ice cream cone. Didn't end so well. But I appreciate the non-horrible spirit behind your missive!!!

Comment by Brooke Linville on August 10, 2010 at 1:18pm: I learned a valuable lesson several months ago when, after waiting for a few months and moving on, I finally got an acceptance email for an essay. I was in the dressing room at Eddie Bauer, and my Blackberry Curve delivered the news. Oh how I love the immediacy of my email on my Blackberry (and I'd better given the amount I pay for the thing!). Another great reminder about being patient, and a big thanks for all your hard work from someone who will pass a slow driver in a huff even if I know I'm going to get stopped at a red light twenty feet away.

Comment by Lori Anne Parker on August 10, 2010 at 1:00pm: Your words about using the pent-up energy for something else hits the nail on the head. I don't really find waiting to be that much of an issue as long as I keep moving on to all the other things I could be/want to be doing. As long as you keep your eyes on your latest project, you'll be fine. Every moment, every essay, every painting, and every submission is just one moment. If you are lucky enough to live a long live you will have a gazillion other moments. So just keep doing. The trick is not to put all your eggs in one basket anyway, right?

Ha: this comment is not me as a horrible person, but me as a horrible writer who used two very cliched cliches. I never do that. I think I need some tea!

Comment by Lea Beresford on August 10, 2010 at 11:32am: Thanks you guys. At lunch today, I didn't have to wait for a table :-)

Comment by Deborah Siegel on August 10, 2010 at 10:16am: If YOU'RE horrible, then I'm HORRIBLE ROTTEN! :) Love this post.

Comment by Mary Keating on August 10, 2010 at 9:35am: Lea-

Good morning to you as well. I truly adored your no mincing of words column this morning. You sharpened your #2 pencil and got right to the point, and the heart of the matter. If I have learned one thing about writing, it is that writing is a bit like standing in the rain buck naked. On one hand, it is not always a pretty sight and on the other hand, exposure and nakedness are a bit uncomfortable.

However, in all honesty, being exposed and waiting makes a writer feel alive – albeit alone and still naked but hopeful and, perhaps a wee bit wet. For the moment, I am clinging to the hopefulness as I realize that once we have waited out this brief storm many of us will have to pick up the shattered remains and wade quietly through the puddles of lost dreams and the wreckage of What Might Have Been town.

Again, your candidness is an awakening to the world that lies ahead for all the talented women willing to expose themselves repeatedly.

Wishing you a day filled with quick lines, fast elevators and ice-cream!