About Waiting

Sometimes, all you can do is wait for something to happen.

You’ve put out resumes, or queries, or submissions to a literary magazine. You put yourself out there, and then you wait.

While waiting the interminable wait, how do you look at your venture? Do you assume the worst hoping that you’ll be pleasantly surprised? Do you bask in a glow of possibility, entertaining the fantasy of success? Are you one of the few who can go on as if you haven’t handed your heart and soul out to strangers?

I myself wait impatiently to hear results, giddily checking Submittable and Query Tracker and email too many times. This is how I know that it was exactly 113 days (or 9763200 seconds) since I submitted Prodigies to DAW.

I have three other submissions out (two short stories and a poem) and one query out (Prodigies again). I know from the conference that rejections may not mean one’s work is not good, but that it doesn’t match current consumer demands. The odds are high given the number of competitors that I will get rejected all the way around. But I remain optimistic, because I need that vision of a change, of the possibility of bursting out of a cocoon having remade myself into an author, to season my days with sweet cinnamon and success.