Waiting is Part of Publishing

“turned on black road signage displaying wait” by Xu Haiwei on Unsplash

I should know this by now. A big part of attempting to publish your work is the wait. I started trying to publish short stories right at the cusp of the e-mail submission revolution in the late 90’s, long before the heaven that is Submittable hit the literary scene, and light years from a galaxy far far away before Medium came along. I spent most of ’97 and much of ’98 stuffing envelopes with my first raw attempts to get my work out there into the big bad literary world. Then standing in front of the mailbox patiently waiting for the rejection letters to arrive.

“mail boxes” by Marius Christensen on Unsplash

In 2003 my first novel was finally ready (or so I thought) to enter the literary agent query letter purgatory that thankfully had mostly left the snail mail days long behind. The number of e-mail rejection form letters that I never received from the lit agents I queried was an underwhelming learning experience, to say the least.

Then at some point during the mid-2000’s I discovered Submittable. The waiting game didn’t change much, but at least I could log in and see that the lit agents and editors were actively ignoring my work. I found it oddly comforting to see either the “received” or “in progress” tab next to the title of my story. At least I knew it was sitting in a digital slush pile or mostly likely about to get the cyber rejection stamp.

And now I’m pumping my wares all over the place. Again, the waiting game hasn’t changed even though once you are a writer for a publication submitting couldn’t be easier. The catch though for me is always about the paywall. When I submit to a publication and hear nothing but the cold soft hum of the nothingness void vibrating through my laptop thoughts like, “Maybe I should withdraw this one and see if I can earn a bit on my own page instead?” spin through my brain. I have one article that has been held hostage for over a month. And I still don’t know what to do with it. Simpletons such as myself shouldn’t be left with such lofty decisions to make. All it does is make me write goofy blog posts like this one.

Helping each other write better.

Waiting is Part of Publishing was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.