THE WAITING GAME AND ALL THAT JAZZ

Okay, I've broken one of the Golden Rules of blogging: do it on a consistent basis. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. But then some wag once said that writers are a guilty lot anyway, so perhaps I'm just exhibiting the identifying characteristics of the species or something.

Finally had my most recent rewrite of DESERT DOGS accepted by my agent. This was back in, what, November? She still had some reservations but I think after two complete rewrites she felt a bit of pity and/or resignation that she wasn't going to get it perfect and I could end up forever reworking this book.

So here's the strategy as she outlined it: she would submit to three editors. If rejections came back with the same reasons for passing then she would ask me for another rewrite. If, however, we got three rejections and none of them passed for the same reasons then at that point we would ignore the reasons (dismissing them as not fundamentally the book's problem but a matter of that particular editor's tastes, etc.) and go wide on submission.

That was my understanding. Touching bases with her a couple weeks back she informed me the book was at St. Martin's. No word as yet. Also, no mention of the other two. I had been under the impression she would send out simultaneously to three. But as I reconstructed our phone conversation, I don't recall anything said about simultaneous submissions. I'm thinking she meant one at a time. So here I am in limbo on the book.

I am pretty much an email kinda guy. I asked if it would be okay to touch bases with my agent by email once a month to get a feel of where we are, etc. She said she was good with that. So that's how I will communicate. I don't want to be a high-maintenance client. But as many of you know, this waiting stuff is so damn hard. You query and wait on those. You get partial requests, you wait on those. You get full requests and you wait on those. Then, if you finally win the literary lotto and an agent makes the call and takes you on, you wait on the editors. And it goes on and on from there. Hey, I shouldn't be complaining, right? I finally got that agent we all dream of getting. And the book is finally on submission at a major publisher. Only a nitwit would be so insensitive to make a big deal out of this. I'm well down the path and damn lucky to be here.

Now I think I understand what that play 'Waiting For Godot' may have REALLY been about...the poor fools were authors waiting to hear from their agent!