Waiting SUCKS

Seriously? Three days of blogging in a row? I'm hoping this means that there is a loosened mechanism somewhere in my head that is going to start the machine that all of us teachers have to get rolling every September. This is the problem with going from long block classes to shorter periods....I really can't get anything overly constructive done during my free blocks....48 minutes and my wonky hip prevent me from doing things like walking up to the main building for stuff and the canned curriculum I've been handed doesn't need much in the way of copies, so....wait, I'm whining about teaching and that's not the purpose of this blog. I want to talk about writing and maybe the worst part about being a writer: waiting.

To say that the publishing industry works at a glacial pace doesn't do justice to how slow it really works. I think of the line from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when Kirk is asking how long it will take the Enterprise to be up and running...and no, I'm not talking about KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! (It's hard to believe how hard it is to find that clip on You Tube!)...and Spock says, "Admiral, if we go "by the book". like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days." Well, each day feels like a million years passes and it's just awful.

It was probably worse when I was still seeking an agent, but it's just as frustrating now that I am represented by an agent. I know I probably drive my agent insane with all my little email notes about what is going on. I'm working very hard at avoiding sending him something unless I absolutely need to. But it's hard. I'm not patient and this is my first run through on all this, so naturally I have questions about what the heck is going on. But it's part of the game. Trust me, people aren't laughing at you, saying "Heh, let's see how long I can keep this sucker strung along." It's just the nature of the business. It's expected to be this way and you just have to sort of work through it. I'm not saying it's easy and it helps when you have something to work on, but sometimes it wriggles past all that stuff and works it's way into distracting you from getting work done.

The worst days are the ones when there seems to be a flurry of reports on deals on the various places where those things are announced: Twitter, Facebook, Galley Cat, etc. Now, I don't subscribe to Publishers Marketplace...and thank God for that. I would probably be homicidal reading about the deals being made and that is even less productive than sending the email equivalent of those notes you used to write to girls in class back in the day: Do you like me? Check Yes or No. Today seemed to be one of those days where people were talking a lot about book deals. But, if my recent eagerness to blog is any indication, I may have found a second writing wind and may be at the edge of a writing flurry for the rest of 2012. 

So, it's time to take a deep breath, dive into what I need to do and really contemplate if my daughter deserves a co-author credit on my YA version of Wagner's Ring Cycle....