On To The Next Thing

I’m having some trouble moving on to the next thing, now that my book has been submitted to the publisher.

The issue for me is that the actual publishing of that book is now out of my hands. I assumed that after I submitted it, it’d be out in bookstores within a few months.

But I’ve clearly been spoiled by the fast turnaround of self-publishing. I write a blog post, and then hit the publish button immediately. Short stories written for contests are submitted, and the results are usually back within a couple of months. For my self-published book of stories, as soon as the text was edited and finalized, I had formatted it, uploaded it, and it was available for sale on Amazon within a week.

As a result, I’m very used to working on one project a a time. But my book is going through a traditional publisher, and that’s a much slower moving engine. The current estimated time for the publisher to move my book through the process and get it into stores is a year.

A year.

There’s things I can be doing in the meantime: building social media buzz, creating some marketing materials, reaching out to potential collaborators for promotion.

What I really need to do, though, is let it go. Move this project off of the frenzied front burner and let it simmer away on the back burner until it demands a quick stir.

So what to bring to the front? It’s hard to focus on something new, when I’m not quite done with the something old.

I’ll be spending the next month or so playing with a few different ideas to see if anything pops. This past year has been crazy intense with writing, but I’ve had enough of a break now. I don’t want to lose the momentum I’ve built up of making writing a part of my daily life.

So it’s time to cook something new. We’ll see what feeds my hunger best. Any requests?

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