The Waiting
As Tom Petty famously reminds us, it is, in fact, the hardest part. I think Tom was talking about love, or maybe the bag of weed he sent a roadie to get, but this certainly applies to writing. Writing itself is fun. Doing edits is kind of a pain, but, realistically, it's still pretty fun. Doing copy edits sucks, but not the way, say, working as a telemarketer sucks. So all that stuff is good.
Promoting your work is occasionally frustrating and humiliating, but still mostly fun. I enjoy the time I spend online, and I have really enjoyed meeting real readers in the real world. It's only frustrating because you can't really know if your efforts are helping your sales, and it's only humiliating when you go to give a reading and nobody shows up, as happened to me and 6 other authors one beautiful early summer day in Washington DC.
But then there's the waiting. Wait for your editor to read your latest. Wait for your editor to tell you whether they want to publish your latest. (if no, go back to waiting as you submit to more editors). Wait for edits. Wait for copy edits. Finish copy edits and wait for galleys. Wait for the book to be published. Wait for six months at least to find out how well the book is selling. Get calls about movie interest. Wait.Wait. Wait.
I mean, look, it's not like any of this waiting is an actual hardship. It's not even as bad as waiting at the DMV or Jury Duty. But it is kind of hard. Because writers make up stories. It's kinda what we do. So left with a void of information, we make up all kinds of stories about what's currently happening, what might happen in the future, what the best case scenario looks like, and what the worst case scenario looks like, and it can get kinda exhausting doing all this stewing in your own juices.
Here's Tom Petty himself. Sorry 'bout the ad:
And for those who are feeling like losers because they're checking their email every 30 seconds and frantically checking their phones to see if they've missed calls, you're not a loser (or, anyway, not any more than the rest of us.) But here's Tom with some encouragement:
