And We Wait

I’ve become an obsessive email checker. If I ever say I haven’t gotten your email (assuming no technical difficulties in the email void), call me on it. I check my email at least five times a day…and that’s probably a low estimate. It’s gotten to the point where I compulsively check it when I’m stuck in traffic, waiting for a friend, or avoiding TV commercials.

My phone has a particular way of vibrating when I receive a new email and if I’m anywhere nearby, I pounce on the thing. I check both my email addresses, though it’s my writer one that I’m after. Sometimes the email’s an update on a blog I follow and sometimes it’s more stuff from Writer’s Digest, but those aren’t what I want. I want news from my critique partners. I’m desperate for it.

Thing is, two of my critique partners have had more contest success than I have. They’ve had agents specifically ask for their query and some pages. One of my other critique partners has been querying for awhile and has full requests out there. One of these times I check my email, it’s going to be a note from a critique partner saying an agent has asked for a full or wants to represent my CP. I know this will happen. It’s only a matter of time.

When you spend so much time critiquing someone else’s manuscript and you invest almost as many hours (okay, not really) in theirs as your own, you feel like it’s as important for them to get published as it is for you. I love what my critique partners have written and I want to share my enthusiasm with my reader friends. I want to tell everyone to read these books…except none of them can. I can’t even rate the things on Goodreads. But I want to. And I will someday. I just have to get those important emails from my CPs first.

So when a new email comes through, I rush to check it. If it’s from one of my critique partners, I read it right away. I’m sure it’ll be good news. Of course it isn’t always good news—that’s the nature of this quest. When the news is bad, I’m first in line to console my CP…or to share in their frustration or anger. I’ve been there, so I know exactly how it feels. I also know exactly what to say (most of the time). Sometimes the agent has a point and sometimes it’s just that they didn’t get my CP’s MS like I did. Sometimes it’s one of those form rejections that make you want to scream and cry and toss your MS into the fire. And sometimes, it’s good news.

Still, news—good or bad—can be a long time coming. The other day I received a rejection from an agent that I queried back in November. Anyone remember November? Wasn’t that before the NEVERENDING winter? That feels like forever ago. I haven’t queried that MS in months because I know it would need some work before I put it out there again. I actually laughed when I got the email.

I don’t get as many emails from my CPs as I’d like and that’s because they’re doing what I’m doing—waiting. We wait and we wait and we wait. The waiting is one of the hardest parts, but that’s where I come in again. I’m here when my critique partners need a reassuring word that this no news means nothing. They’re there for me when I need them, too. That’s the best part about this waiting—having others on this quest with me. We’re a team…a waiting team, but a team. It’s so nice to have my critique partners for company. It’ll be even nicer when they get agents. Those emails will come; we just have to wait for them.