Publishing Journey: Impatience

There is one word NOBODY will ever use to describe me: Patient.

I don’t even aspire to be more patient because it seems like striving for something impossible, like wishing I was shorter (which I do, occasionally, because I’m 5’11” and gangly as all hell). My brain moves really, really fast, and my expectations move at that same pace. Pros of this: I’m super efficient and good at getting things done. I can crank out the first draft of a novel in a couple months. Cons of this: I get very distressed when the world around me moves slowly (or what I would define as “slowly”). Oh, and when I say “distressed,” I mean moody and irritable and generally unpleasant. My poor husband.

I had it in my head that if/when I got a book deal, things would move fast. I did not know there was this year of time between getting the deal and publication. The publishing house has a list of titles already in their queue, after all; plus, they need time to do final edits on my book, proofread the thing, design the cover, set up a marketing plan, etc, etc (I’m sure I will become more familiar with what “etc” entails in the coming months). My publisher warned me that most writers HATE this year of waiting. I didn’t really understand why. I thought, “Well, isn’t it kind of ideal? There’s this year when things are in motion on the to-be-published book, and there’s momentum that will come in handy for working on something new.” Except it’s not like that.

Right now, I’m waiting on final edits to my manuscript. Waiting, waiting, waiting. I have absolutely no idea how big or small the edits will be. Will I have to cut a few lines here and there? Or will I have to change the gender of a character? Or kill someone off? Or…or…or… As the months go by, my brain has come up with about a thousand different scenarios. What if I don’t agree with the edits? I signed the contract, so I guess I have to make them anyway. It all feels very out of my control because, um, it is.

I just checked the time stamp on the Word doc that holds my novel to see when I last worked on it. October 1, 2014. So, it has been almost a full 6 months since I’ve even LOOKED at it. That scares me. What if I get the edits and I’m just not interested in the story anymore? I feel like I’m going to have to go back in there and dig around, like a surgeon who left gauze in some poor dude’s chest cavity during a procedure months ago. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but I know it’s necessary. Or mandatory, rather.

I’ve been working on a new novel. I have about 100 pages. I couldn’t help myself. A damn story ran up and bit me, as Bradbury says.

It feels like I’m having some kind of scandalous affair, cheating on my to-be-published novel. It would be prudent (as grandmothers say) to wait and do my final edits before getting involved with new characters, but six months is a long time for me to wait. And we’ve already established that waiting is not my jam. I kind of HAVE to write. It doesn’t work for me to set aside a story idea “for later.” Like Bradbury says, there is this specific time when the story latches on. If you wait, it will let go and find some other poor bastard to give it some love.

So that’s where I’m at: Knee deep in a new story I love while waiting to edit a story I’m not interested in anymore. It’s like a literary-themed episode of Days of Our Lives over here. Pray for my husband.