Waiting

My son Jacob had a Calculus 2 exam the other day. So he spent the weekend obsessively checking the university website, where grades are posted. (This really beats the old days when professors posted grades on their office doors and you had to trek down to their office to get your grade.) Though I know what it’s like to wait at the computer. Any writer who’s trying to get a book published knows what it’s like to hit the refresh button on their email.

I’m waiting to hear back on a full of my literary novel (I call it “the platypus” though it has nothing to do with animals), which is with one of my dream agents right now. She’s read a partial already so she knows the voice and writing style. Now I wait. And try not to think about the book. And ignore the nervous pitch in my stomach when I check my email. For those of you who haven’t had the writing experience, the next step is either an emailed rejection, an email asking for revisions, an email wanting to schedule a phone conversation, or a phone call out of the blue to talk about representation.

In the meantime, I enjoy my kids, clean my house, and write some more. I’m 4/5s of the way done with a sequel to the YA novel I’ve written. (Yes, I write more than one genre.) And I have an idea for another literary novel, which I can’t wait to get to.

Anyone else out there waiting?