Surviving the Submission Process

Writer Molly had some wine last night and like a bad split personality - Righteous Molly came out to play. Sometimes it's fun, most of the time I wake up the next morning feeling like I need to apologize to a bunch of people. This morning not withstanding. Maureen - Sorry.

Sinead's post on Wednesday about how crazy we are as writers is all too true and frankly there is no worse breeding ground for the writer insanity than those long desolate weeks of the submission process. The waiting for the phone calls, waiting for the emails, waiting for your life to start again, waiting to feel like writing, waiting to feel like doing anything - it's the worst kind of limbo.

I know we're supposed to just keep writing. Start a new project, get your head in the game - but is anybody really able to do this whole-heartedly? Really? Isn't just an exercise to exercise?

My worst submission hell was after two Harlequin lines had collapsed from under me (and Stephanie Doyle, but again - let's not blame her) . I got a new agent and she's a great agent (but tell that to a person waiting in submission hell - because what you do after doubting yourself is doubt your agent, no matter how good.)

But this process was taking upwards of TWO YEARS.

Two years of submitting to the same editor (who had said she wasn't sure I could write Supers) at the same house I had already written five books for. Two years. I had two supers out on submission and a single title that was going nowhere. So it was silence at one end and a steady stream of rejections from the other. I was hysterical.

I was at a party one night (a fundraiser for a camp for kids with Cancer - which you would think would put things into perspective for me - but no. Nope. Crazy and shallow and self-absorbed, that is the writer out on submission.) I picked a fight with my husband, left the party, walked home crying. The low low point of my writer life thus far.

So, what can you do when waiting? Well, what you really need is a kid with pink eye, or a flu epidemic in your house - something so time consuming that you don't have time to obsess. Barring that - I think you've got to get out of your house. Waiting for the phone or the emails is a long slow death. Exercise, walk, shop, drink coffee, drink booze. Anything to get you away from the computer and the phone.

Read. Read all those books outside your genre that have been piling up around you. But don't read your genre - please. That's the crazy inviting professional jealousy over for a barbecue.

Organize your sock drawer, make dentist appointments, clean out your front hall closet -- all those chores we neglect because we're too busy writing - now is the time to get it done.

And finally, yes, keep writing. Because that's what we are and what we do and the crazy just can't take that away.