Waiting

Oh New York, you disappoint me so.

In other news...Well, this isn't actually news so much as me talking about waiting as I said I would in Tuesday's post.

Now, I know a fair bit about the publishing business, but all in the theoretical sense. I'm unpublished as far as fiction is concerned. Once a poem of mine was submitted to be included in a student anthology in high school, but the teacher had missed the deadline. Aside from that, every work of mine that has ever reached the eyes of others has been either in newsprint or on the internet, the former being the more legitimate of the two.

I've been in the newspaper a number of times, always in the Local section of course. There was one time just over a year ago that a short column of mine was published in a county wide newspaper. Mainly though it was through the school paper that I got any real writing discipline.

Journalism II was fast paced and there was always a sense of urgency whenever the deadline was looming. I know how to plan ahead to meet any deadline now so I'm not scrambling at the last moment, and I basically learned all of that from Journalism II. Sure, I would set deadlines for myself before, but when I didn't meet them there were no consequences. If I didn't meet my deadline there then my story didn't run and I probably wouldn't be able to write another assignment similar as I would have labeled myself as unreliable.

True, sometimes the paper itself didn't meet it's deadline, but I did my best to make sure that I was never a contributor to that.

There was however a certain time that it wasn't so fast paced and all hustle and bustle. That time was known as the time in between issues. It could be viewed as both the best and the worst time. It was the best because you got to catch up and relax. The tension wasn't on. It was that much needed breath before another plunge into that ocean known as Deadline. It was the worst because after a while it got boring. Waiting became the enemy. All you wanted to do is just write something for the new issue. When that break became a painfully stagnant period no amount of gossip or casual conversation could take my mind off of what was next.

Not knowing the exact when of things drives me nuts.

So, naturally, I want to get involved in publishing.

Publishing is full of waiting. So far I'm on the unpublished side, as previously stated. I'm also on the unagented side, which is a little bit worse, but either way, it happens. I know you're supposed to query agents and then wait for their replies. And then if one offers representation you're supposed to wait and think it over, so as not to make any rash decisions. Once you accept an offer you're supposed to wait until they find an editor for it and then you have to wait because you're doing more revisions. Once it's the best it can be you have to wait to have it sold. Once that happens you have to wait for it to be actually published. Of course other non waiting things like publicity and marketing happen in there, but waiting is a major factor.

So far I've waited a lot. Not nearly as much as some, but still a significant amount of time. Waiting blows. I have my query up to the standards that I think is accurately representative of my writing capabilities and the story's plot. I have the story in as close a place to the final incarnation as I could get to on my own. Now it's the holidays almost, which is the quite possibly the worst time to query. So, I'm waiting until half way into the first month of the New Year until I send it out.

For now I am content to say that the book is finished. I just have to wait to do anything with it.