The waiting game: 5 ways to stay productive while you're waiting on gatekeepers
Stop refreshing your inbox and start doing these five things instead.
Hi there!
A little housekeeping note for writers who are new to our community. Open calls for writing material are placed through the “Friday Office Hours” section of this newsletter. In those open calls, subscribers can share public-facing material like query letters and artist statements in the comments and if your material is chosen, I’ll workshop it in a dedicated Substack post. There aren’t currently any open calls right now (though there is one coming Friday!) and I kindly ask that you don’t email me material for review outside of those open calls. Workshopping subscriber material is a privilege reserved for paid subscribers— please upgrade if you’d like to join us for the open call this Friday. (I’ll reveal the topic then.)
Now on to the task at hand: How to stay productive and relatively sane while we’re waiting for gatekeepers to weigh in on something we’ve submitted.
At the time of writing, it’s been 11 days since I handed in the draft of a new novel to my agent. (But who’s counting?) When I turned it in, my agent called to let me know that while she was excited, she probably couldn’t read it until the end of January, so I might be waiting for feedback until mid February or so. That means I have nearly a month of dead time where I can’t work on the novel (nothing irks an agent like a writer editing a manuscript they’re preparing edits on) nor can I think productively about the manuscript because it’s (literally) out of my hands.
To be clear before I continue: I am waiting to get feedback from a literary agent I’ve published 5 books with. Accordingly, I have an idea of what she’s going to say and think: I’m not going into this cold. It’s a much different process when you are querying or submitting to agents and editors that you have no prior relationship with—I want to acknowledge that. But in both cases, we’re still talking about a writer who is waiting on a verdict from a gatekeeper, which is a vulnerable and helpless place for us writers to be.
So how do you get through it? Back in 2012, I published a piece for Tin House called “How to stay sane while querying literary agents” when I was querying agents myself. Even though that piece is more than a decade old, I stand by the advice I wrote then, which is mostly psychosomatic and mental-health concerned. As a complement to that other essay, today I want to share the things you can do during the waiting period that will 1) help keep you occupied 2) benefit your career.
I’ll definitely be looking to hear from others in the comments as to how they stay levelheaded during the wait— but for now, here are the top 5 things I recommend to up your productivity and elevate your platform while you’re waiting on agents and gatekeepers to respond to your submission.
