Tick tock

This is the worst part of the writing process for me:

The waiting.

The manuscript is done, and it’s in Taryn’s hands.  I sit and wait, usually for about a week, hoping to hear that it’s absolutely perfect. 

Expecting to hear that it’s absolutely perfect.

That’s a long week.  A frustrating week. A hair-pulling, gut-wrenching week, and sometimes, it’s more than a week. 

Can you believe it?  More!

And even if the manuscript is perfect, then there’s the submission process.  The manuscript goes to my editor and publisher for review, and so begins the agonizing wait for an offer, which can take another month or more. 

Sometimes I feel like screaming, “I just spent a year writing those 100,000 words, people!  And you’re going to make me wait more than a month to find out it’s fate?  C’mon!  No eating or sleeping until you’ve read the damn thing!”

I secretly wish that Taryn, my editor, and the suits at Doubleday would just read along with me as I write, sentence for sentence, word for word, like some giant, interconnected video game, so that just as I type that final word of the book, my phone would ring.

“Hi, Matt.  It’s Taryn!  I love the way you ended the book.  So much heart!  So much humor!  And your editor loved it even more.  We were sitting here, watching you finish it together.  Doubleday’s offering a four-book, seven-figure deal.  What do you think?”

I don’t know what’s less likely: the read-along-with-me scenario or the seven-figure offer.

Probably both.