Takes Longer than you Think

Whenever my husband and I plan for a household project, such as landscaping, or fixing a plumbing issue, we always double the dollar amount we expect it to cost. From experience, we’ve learned that we usually underestimate, especially when hiring out. So we double our estimate and come close.

Same goes with publishing. Each step takes longer than we think it will.

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Agent Rachelle Gardner tweeted this on Thursday:

Paradox: Publishing seems to move at a glacial pace. Yet all of us (agents & editors) are running as fast as we can.

Once you get your work OUT THERE, you will learn the meaning of patience. I thought being a mother taught me to be patient. Uh-uh. God placed little ones in my life in order to prepare me for the submission process, I’m sure of it.

We can control our writing pace, the number of hours we put in to learning the craft, and any number of other writerly activities. But once the query email has left our computers, we have no control on when we will hear back. Anywhere from five minutes to never.

A watched pot never boils. Nor a phone ring, or an email ding. Sigh.

In The Waiting is the Worst Part, agent Nathan Bransford talks about how hard it was for him to wait while his own book was out on submission:

A WEEK AND A HALF. That’s how long it took before I woke up in the middle of the night to check my e-mail…

LOL. Yes! (insert fist pump) I was glad to read that a seasoned agent, familiar with the querying process, also had trouble waiting patiently for an answer.

Chris Richman at Upstart Crow Agency wrote a blog post recently called On Patience. He gives a timeline of a query sent to him in Dec 2008 and finally ending with a publishing contract on March 2010, with a pub date of Fall 2011. And that timeline didn’t even include the months (years?) it took the author to write and revise the book in the first place.

There is no solution to the waiting game. Setting your expectations helps. “Write the next book” is the common advice. I say, print out these clichés and tape them to your computer, your phone, and your bathroom mirror:

• In due time.

• It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

• Slow and steady wins the race.

• Better late than never.