The Waiting Game

Being an author often requires a lot of waiting. Once you submit a story for consideration, it often takes weeks or months before you hear anything - whether they love your baby or have consigned it to the trash heap. The best advice I've heard for dealing with this is to keep writing. Hopefully, you'll get engrossed in other projects and the time will pass more quickly - and you'll spend less time obsessively hitting the "refresh" button on your email, waiting for The News.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't check in from time to time, but for goodness' sake, don't ever query until AFTER their deadline for responding to you (note this is different from your deadline to have the story turned in!) has passed. In fact, it's best to wait a week to two weeks after their response deadline just to give those considering your work a little extra time - they have lives too, and as the saying goes, shit happens.