As I've embarked on the querying process I have come to realize that anxiety seems to become a companion I am too familiar with. A couple weeks ago an editor emailed me saying she wanted to see my full manuscript after having read the first three chapters. Wahoo! But then every single day I checked my email thinking, "It's been a full 24 hours, how long does it take for a busy editor to read an entire novel?" or "Come now, surely she should have been so excited that she couldn't help but read the entire thing in one night." After the first week though I've come to realize she will read it when she reads it, and it's ok. It's been 3 weeks and I haven't heard back yet. And that's ok too.
Today has been another one of those days. My entry was chosen to be in the Secret Agent contest on the blog, Miss Snarks First Victim. It is also PitMad. I visit the blog, "Only two people have critiqued my entry? Will the agent like it?" Then I jump over to Pitmad. "Only 1 agent has requested material?" But 1 agent requested material. That's awesome.
Of course that would have been better if I had known that pressing CTRL at the same time as Enter will actually send your email. So as I was editing my query letter previously sent to another agent for this particular agent, it got sent. And i'm screaming, "No, come back!" But it didn't. So then I sent the real email, apology included.
The deal is that I'm 100% confident that my novel will be published. I get a lot of positive feedback. And then when I'm in the midst of everything my anxiety kicks in and I think, "Would they really pick me over all of these other awesome writers and awesome novels?"
So to deal with that anxiety today I have limited how often I check the internet to once an hour by:
Cleaning. A lot.
Reading books to my kids
Writing this blog post
Eating
More cleaning
Trying to figure out why my 18 month old is screaming (failed at this one. Still no idea)
What do YOU do to cope with the anxiety of it all?
