Waiting for Responses

I think that possibly the worst thing about writing is the submission process and the waiting for a response. Well, it's possible that repeated rejections are worse than the waiting, but I feel like I have some measure of control over that. When it comes to repeated rejections, I feel that a few things can be done: revise it so it's better, find another place that is better suited to it, or put it away and accept that it was good practice, but not a great result. Finding the right place seems to be most important, since revising and editing a piece should go without saying.

So we come to waiting for a response. I have been guilty at times of finding and submitting to markets that respond quickly (or say that they respond quickly) even if I don't think that my story is a good fit for a story. I find the wait to be nigh unbearable at times. Currently, I have two stories that are out there that I anticipate receiving a response sometime this summer. A third is being revised and will be sent out to wait 3 months when it's ready. All this amounts to a whole lot of down time for those stories.

I understand that magazines get a lot of unsolicited submissions and that there are reasons for the long delay, but that doesn't make it easier to take.

Since I'm currently in school (again, hopefully for the next-to-last time) I find that I relate time to other things, like my daughter's age at the time that such-and-such will be completed. This has bled over into my submissions, too. I think things like "She'll be crawling when I get this one back." While it tends to keep things in perspective, it's still hard to wait so long.

I guess this isn't really an earth shattering post, but I wanted to share. Really, 3 months isn't that long in any kind of grand-scheme time line, but it can seem like forever at times.