Three agents are currently “reading” my manuscript.  Two women and one man. And though I am a happily married heterosexual female, I can’t help but think of these three as potential mates. Landing an agent is really a lot like dating. And no matter how self-confident you are, at some point all your insecurities come into play. You start to wonder: Am I good enough?  Will he or she like me? Does this manuscript make me look fat? Ok, maybe that last one is a bit much, but you get the idea. Then there’s the time it takes for these good folks to get back to you. Some are merciful enough to give you an idea of when you’ll hear back from them. 3 to four weeks, they say. Well, which is it? 3 or 4? The desperation kicks in and you start to have strange ideas. Like, would the agent respond faster if you somehow disconnected his twitter page, preventing him or her from tweeting about random independent bookstores and literary parties, thus forcing him/her to read your manuscript. I once contemplated attaching an alarm-like device to the manuscript that would beep every day or two until the thing was read in it’s entirety.

Neurotic, you say? Maybe. But you try slaving over 80,000 words for 6 years, and see where it lands you. I can’t be the only writer suffering from this neurosis. There are more of you out there. How do you cope with the insanity that is writing/ publishing? More specifically, how do you cope with the waiting period?