On Submitting and the Infinite Wait...

The No Man’s Land of Waiting for Feedback

Submitting your manuscript (or a portion of it) for the consideration of an agent or publisher can be a nerve-wracking experience. Such suffering can be cured by a simple yes or no, but the wait… Us writers can come up with all kinds of horrible thoughts – each containing the words “maybe it’s not good enough“.

I have submitted my novel to agents last month…and I’m still waiting. The agony of not knowing if they love it or hate it is driving me crazy! Sources on the net suggest that the average wait is three months or more and that if you’re waiting longer than six, you might as well take the hint and move on.

So, what can you do?

Don’t hold your breath

At this stage, it might be easy to put your writing in neutral, after all, you submitted, your work is done. Right? Well, no. But you knew that, didn’t you? Everything else is just the voice of procrastination talking. You know the one.

Anyway. This waiting time should not be waiting time at all. Instead, you should keep working. Whether you are improving/editing the submitted manuscript or starting a new one, the important thing is that you keep working.

Put the anxiety out of your mind. Write. Keep writing. That way, when rejection comes, you won’t feel as if you wasted months of your life.

My Work

I have been working on the final draft of The Silent Symphony for a couple of years. It is quite close to completion (unless you count Chapter 29). It has been a labor of love and frustration. I have kept most of it rather secret, but now I want to share the blurb with you. What do you think? Would you read it?

The Silent Symphony

The Silent Symphony tells the story of a handful of young people who try to make a name for themselves in the great walled City. Cassius can charm even the heartless with his prose, he seeks the immortality of fame. Katrina’s paintings reveal our hidden truths, yet she seeks only to forget the past. The future hides in Aylena’s poems, but who would believe a lowly, mixed-race waitress? Warrick only cares about the next big score, but who is he really fooling? Chandler Bellanger, first a figure in the shadows and then governor-elect, is said to have the ear of the gods. It is his destiny to end all the evils of the old world – poverty, crime, disease, insurrection, and madness – by ushering in an era of conformity and utter silence.

These political machinations threaten their dreams and places them all on a collision course with destiny. In a world where truth has no value, perhaps only art can break the silence.

We are told of the manuscript that broke through the stillness by our narrator, the Witness – a ghost that believes it is her destiny to chronicle the major events of history. She recounts the story to discover why the walled City lies in ruins twenty-five years later.