{"id":997,"date":"2011-06-20T08:25:20","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T12:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=997"},"modified":"2011-06-20T08:25:20","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T12:25:20","slug":"how-to-not-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/how-to-not-wait\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Not Wait"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pure waiting can make a writer all snarly and resentful, and then plain kill her.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done my share of waiting to hear from people ever since I first sent out queries to agents and hoped for positive responses.\u00a0 I waited to hear if they\u2019d like my book, and then I waited to hear if editors would make any offers. Back then, my blood crawled on tiny sharp feet in my veins the entire time I waited, and trying to sleep at night was the worst.\u00a0 I think it was the hope, the not knowing and the lack of control that got to me.\u00a0 Even when you\u2019re\u00a0 pregnant, you have some idea when the baby will show up, but with submissions, you never know when you\u2019ll hear.\u00a0 It keeps you on edge for every phone call and email until you\u2019re gnawed raw.<\/p>\n

Luckily, waiting is different now when I\u2019m not on submission and instead have moved deep into the publishing process.\u00a0 These days, waiting involves just an occasional ping in the back of my mind.\u00a0 My editor Nan and I have this cordial back-and-forth system with my drafts which goes like this: I send her a draft.\u00a0 Weeks or months later, she sends me her editorial comments and we have a phone call.\u00a0 I work on the book for another couple months and send it back, and we repeat.\u00a0 The farther out we are in the process, the longer are the gaps between the exchanges, and conversely, the closer we get to production deadlines, the faster are our turn-arounds.\u00a0 Right now, we\u2019re working on an early draft of Book 3 in the Birthmarked<\/em> trilogy, which won\u2019t be released until fall 2012, so the gaps are long.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t silent gaps, though, because we\u2019ve had continuing exchanges about Prized<\/em>, too.\u00a0 We\u2019re really both working on two books in different stages.<\/p>\n

\"\"While a draft is off to Nan, sometimes I keep working on the novel so it will be further along by the time her comments come back to me, especially if I\u2019m obsessed with it.\u00a0 Other times, I start a completely new, different project.\u00a0 That way, I have the fun of exploring new ideas, and by the time the working draft comes back to me, I\u2019ll reimmerse myself in it with a fresh perspective and Nan\u2019s questions to guide me forward.\u00a0 I\u2019m never waiting idly, dependent on Nan\u2019s timetable to keep my own work going.\u00a0 That\u2019s important for my productivity and my own sense of control.\u00a0 That\u2019s my not waiting.<\/p>\n

There is one other piece of this system.\u00a0 Business with my agent Kirby Kim keeps me in fairly regular contact with him, and I update him on my draft status with Nan.\u00a0 He has a fine-tuned awareness of where she is with things and how busy editors have been, generally, with conferences.\u00a0 A couple times when I was restless about feedback, especially when I was new to this process, Kirby reminded me to be patient, and other times he has given my editor a polite nudge.<\/p>\n

Publishing as I experience it is not a rushed operation.\u00a0 It involves thoughtful people working carefully, which is worth the time it takes.\u00a0 I\u2019m curious to see if my practice with not waiting will help me once I have a new project on submission again.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to reduce that snarling anxiety to an absent-minded ping while the more advanced, civilized version of me (ha) keeps writing.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see how that goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pure waiting can make a writer all snarly and resentful, and then plain kill her.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done my share of waiting to hear from people ever since I first sent out queries to agents and hoped for positive responses.\u00a0 I waited to hear if they\u2019d like my book, and then I waited to hear if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1000,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/997\/revisions\/1000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}