Today’s going to be a shorter post because most of yesterday was spent with me biting my nails while waiting for news on my brother’s brain surgery. As an update, the surgeons were successfully able to remove the tumor. Yay!
He still has a long recovery, and we won’t know for weeks if there’s any paralysis, but the outcome so far is the best we could have hoped for. Thank you all so much for the thoughts and prayers! (And for keeping me distracted on social media. *grin*)
But all that brought to mind how hard waiting can be, so I want to take a minute to recognize all the ways we wait, as writers, and hope that issues beyond our control go our way. Believe me, I feel your pain. *smile*
We wait for…
- our beta readers to give their feedback
- finalist announcements from contests we’ve entered
- winner announcements from contests we’ve finaled in
- rejections or requests on queries
- rejections or requests on partials
- rejections or offers on full submissions
- rejections or interest from editors
- acquisitions editors to give the A-okay
- when we can announce our book deal or release date
- payment from our advance
- our editor to get back to us with changes
- feedback on whether we fixed everything that needed fixing
- our line/copy editor to get back to us with changes
- our proofreader to get back to us with changes
- our cover artist to finish our cover
- when we can release our cover
- our release date
- our first reviews
- seeing the first person we don’t know mention our book
- our first sales
- various milestones for number of reviews (10, 25, 50, 100)
- various sales milestones
- various income milestones
- our first royalty payment
- our first blurb-worthy quote about our book from an author we respect
- our first fan letter
In other words, there’s a heck of a lot of things that we’re not in control of as writers, even if we self-publish. No matter what, some things will always be out of our control. Talk about real-life tension.
That means we’ll always need a plan for how to handle those issues. We’ve probably all heard the advice that the best way to pass the time (and the best way to help our author career) is to start the next book. But let’s also talk about some of the other things we can do with our time.
We can…
- research more about the step so we’re prepared if it happens (i.e., researching what to look out for on publishing contracts when waiting to hear from an acquisitions editor, etc.)
- research the next step so we’re ready to move forward (i.e. researching editors while waiting to hear from beta readers, etc.)
- write the synopsis, query, or back-cover blurb
- work on our career plan (what do we want?)
- decide on what we want our brand to be
- work on building our platform (website, blog, social media, etc.)
- come up with an author tagline
- work on our business plan
- plan our upcoming releases (can we do a series?, etc.)
- network with other writers (join writing forums, etc.)
- attend writing workshops or conferences
- catch up on reading blog posts or email
- beta read for others
- vent to our friends about having to wait
- write a blog post (I was not successful with this method yesterday)
- goof off on social media *smile*
That last item really helped me yesterday, as seeing all the thoughts and prayers for my brother and his family kept me distracted during the wait for updates. My brother had gotten a kick out of hearing where everyone rooting for him was from, so I spent much of the day plotting the locations (of those I knew) of the comments here on my blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
As of last night, I’d counted over 100 Likes, Favorites, Retweets, and comments from those where I didn’t know their location. In addition to that, I pinned the comments and locations for 150 more on a map.
That’s darn impressive. Thank you…truly. I’m near speechless and so grateful for all of you. This is why I blog and do social media. Yesterday, you all kept me sane (or nearly so *grin*).
My point is that there are many good and healthy and helpful and productive ways to pass the time when we’re waiting for things outside our control. And sometimes, even the “non-productive” activities can do us a world of good. *smile*
What did I miss from my list of things writers have to wait for? Do you struggle with waiting for news? How do you pass the time? Do you have other suggestions for my list on what we can do with our time while we wait?
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