The Waiting Game, Upleveled

Notes on Writer Anxiety

By now most everyone in my life knows that I sold my first novel. They are excited for me (yay!), which leads them to ask for updates (boo!). 

Here’s a sampling of texts I’ve gotten in the past week:

What’s new with the book?

When will I be able to buy it?

What’s the latest on the cover?

You don’t get to pick? That sucks.

Do you have a release date yet?

I responded dutifully—not much; I’m not sure; nothing new; it’s normal; not yet. But each text sparked an odd, familiar anxiety—the same anxiety, I realized, that I used to feel when I told a friend I was working on a novel. That’s so cool! they would respond. When will it be published?

Oooof, no. It doesn’t work like that.

They mean well, I’m sure—my friends and family—but they just don’t know how book publishing works. How slow it is. They assume the hard part is the writing, and that if you can do that, the rest will follow in a reasonable, timely fashion—the way going to med school or getting an MBA almost inevitably leads to a career in medicine or business.

You do the work, you pass the test, you get the job.

Hah. For most of us, writing is the easy part —though calling it easy is a big fat lie, because it will take months (read: years) of dedicated work to complete a manuscript good enough to sell. After that, there is querying (weeks or months), and editing (weeks or months), and being on sub (days or weeks or months), and waiting for your contract (months), waiting for your edit letter (weeks), then your line edits (I’m still waiting), then copyedits (not there yet), and galleys, and….

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

My official offer from Hyperion Ave came on December 16, 2022. I was in Austin, TX, having a champagne lunch with my friend to celebrate our birthdays when I got the call. My agent warned me that the “terms weren’t final,” but I didn’t hear that part. I didn’t want to hear that part. I had such a good lunch. I was elated for a full two hours. I told my friend everything. I texted my husband, my sister, my writing partners, my best friends. I had done my anxious waiting—to find my agent, to sell the book—and now, I thought, that was all over. 

When my champagne buzz wore off, though, I realized what CeCe meant with her warning—there would be phone calls and emails and discussions about contract clauses and AI language and option materials and bindings and who knows what other minutia. In other words, it wasn’t over. There would be more anxious waiting.

When I came home from Austin, my kids had made me congratulatory signs decorated with little marker-drawn pictures of books, my (old) title scrawled on the cover.

My heart sank. (And no, not because my youngest signed his “I am leaving frevr.”)

It was sweet, of course, and I thanked them and hugged them and appreciated them. But they didn’t understand. Not even my husband understood. It was just an offer. No one had signed anything. Nothing had changed.

CeCe and the editor went back and forth on terms until March. A few months after that, I heard that the first draft of the contract arrived, but I didn’t read it. The final draft, the one I actually read and signed, didn’t come until October 2023. That’s ten months! Ten months since my kids made me those posters. 300-something days of anxiety dreams and wild hope and stomach-dropping fear, never fully believing we would sign and constantly fending off questions from the people I had (stupidly, prematurely) told.

What’s taking so long? I would think. 

“What’s taking so long?” my friends, family, and therapist would ask.

“Sometimes,” CeCe would assure me, “it just takes this long.”

I have since signed the contract, gotten my PM announcement and part of my advance. I’ve seen mock ups for possible covers. My title is even on Goodreads! (Thanks, Pramika!) I know that it’s happening; there is no denying it is actually, truly, happening.

So why does it still scare me to get these well-meaning texts?

I think I’ve figured it out. I’ve been disappointed by publishing before—not selling my first book, the ghosting of my first agent, and other things that I will save for a different newsletter. I have my guard up. I am always looking for the let down, waiting to be blindsided with bad news I can’t control. 

So when one of my friends sends me a “what’s up with the book” text, and I have no good answer, no development, nothing to add from the last time we talked, I start worrying I am not doing something that I should be doing. That something is wrong. 

(No lie, as I was writing this, I got a text from CeCe. My blood ran cold. My first thought: disaster.)

In the past, I held it all in. I zipped my lips and became a vault of anxiety. Now I have more people around me who understand exactly what I’m going through because they are in it, too. It helps to have people who get it, but it’s still a struggle.

The only way to get through is through—to keep writing. So, while I wait for my line edits (and no, I don’t know when they will arrive), I’m doing that. For the very first time, I am outlining a book. I am spending time in my head with new characters, getting to know them and to understand what makes them do the things they will do.

I downloaded the Save the Cat software, which so far has been an excellent tool, allowing me to pace out my beats.

I started two files: one with the story itself, and one with my cut darlings. Guess which one is bigger! (Spoiler: it’s the scraps — I got to 10,000 words before I realized something wasn’t right, and I slashed back to 4,000.)

This is not one of those newsletters where I give you tricks and tips. I don’t have any, other than to keep writing. I’m still figuring it out how to deal with my intrusive writer anxiety.

What about you? What are you anxious about?

How to do talk to your friends and families about your writing?

How do you muddle through all the waiting?

How do you manage the highs and the lows?

These are selfish questions— I really want to know!

In the meantime, I will keep writing, because that is all I can control.