The Quiet Terror of the Inbox

There’s a peculiar kind of silence that settles in after I’ve hit “send” on a query email to a literary agent. It’s not the comforting hush of a job well done or the expectant pause before a storm. No—this is a clawing, teeth-on-edge kind of silence. It’s the silence of an inbox that might hold my future… or nothing at all.

At first, I keep Outlook open, front and centre, checking it obsessively. Then, like an addict, I set my notifications to ping with every new arrival—only to discover that someone else has noticed my erectile dysfunction, or worse, someone from work needs something urgent. Each ding raises my heartbeat by a degree. Each disappointment chips away at something that once felt solid.

This is the hidden truth of the querying process: it’s not just about rejection. It’s about waiting. And waiting, when you’ve poured your heart into something as personal and fragile as a novel, feels like standing alone in an empty theatre, on a stage, under a spotlight that never turns on.

I imagine the agents opening my submission with a sigh, laughing at my prose, barely able to believe that something so brilliant has not been written before. Or worse—missing it entirely because it’s one of 300 that day and they’re out of coffee. I start to question everything: my premise, my tone, my opening line, my life choices. Maybe I should just focus on my “day job” after all…

And yet, in the stillness between refreshes, something strange begins to happen.

I start thinking about Atlantis. About a boy descended from a survivor of the cataclysm. I scribble the outline of a scene, a line of dialogue. And suddenly I’m writing again—not querying, not waiting, just writing.

The world falls away. The pulse slows. The self-doubt dims. It’s not for an agent. It’s not even for readers. It’s just for the story.

Here’s the quiet truth that slips in after the noise dies down: writing should be its own reward.

Yes, publication is validating. Yes, agents are gatekeepers. And yes, it would be lovely—god, just lovely—to get that call. But the real goal was never fame or recognition. The goal, always, was to create something beautiful, honest, and entertaining. To build something from nothing. To make the dream real.

The artistic life often looks glamorous from the outside: book launches, panels, Instagrammable writing retreats. But inside, it’s a practice. A discipline. A relationship with the page that no amount of outside silence should be allowed to erode. And in that practice—in that daily return to the craft—there is a quiet kind of heroism.

I don’t write because someone asked me to (in fact, it’s often the opposite). I write because I love it. And if I can make peace with that—if I can find joy in the making—I’ll always have what matters most.

Everything else is just noise.