Nicole Givens Kurtz :: Blog

As most aspiring writers know, the waiting for a response from a publisher, agent, or contest is enough to make you want to shot yourself in the head and then (because most writers are zombies) drive out in front of an on-coming truck. Still you wouldn’t be dead and you’d still have to wait to get a response.

For the record, I absolutely detest waiting for a response from publishers, agents, and contest coordinators/judges. Even though I understand completely that there is only a handful of people responsible for handling a trash-collection-truck size amount of submissions, I find the waiting tortuous at best.

Couple that dread for waiting with the automatic and sometimes snotty rejection responses and well, you have the bane of my existence. It is also one reason I publish my work electronically and prefer to submit my queries online as well.

Oh, sure, I can understand the agent’s view of not wanting to come to work and open an email in-box stuffed with six hundred queries. But come on! Join the 21st century! Snail mail is not only slow, but cruel and unusal punishment!

Not that sending my query faster via electronic means guarantees that I’ll get a response sooner. There are still some agents I have never heard from and it’s been years! So, how can I, a writer, and one who needs an agent, publisher, etc. to look at my work reconcile myself to the wait?

I don’t really know. Many articles about writing state that I should busy myself with my other works or begin writing something new.

Good advice, and honestly, it does keep me busy for awhile, but then…

The new project is ready to be published (in my opinion) and so the cycle begins a new…I write a query letter and wait for a response.

Pretty soon I am waiting for many responses and I have to create a spreadsheet just to keep up with what’s come in and what’s gone out.

Nevertheless it is a necessary evil of the business, and I know it.

I just wanted to vent about it here…