The Waiting is the Hardest Part. (Except for the Worrying.)

So I have been in sort of a null period with the writing for a couple months; I’ve been churning out reviews here and there, and a few music-related blog posts, but by and large I have been waiting to get feedback from the agent about the latest round of revisions to Resistance.

The agent works for a reputable agency (which pretty much means they're in New York, but not in someone's home in New York, and they represent at least one or two people who are already on my bookshelf), and her initial comments on the manuscript were pretty enthusiastic; she seemed excited to be working with me, and I was excited in turn to have actually made it past the dreaded rejection-letter phase of the book-selling process.

The only problem is that our communications have been somewhat sporadic of late.

About a month ago, she emailed me a link to a news story about a novel that had been smuggled out of Nazi Germany in a cake, figuring (rightly) that I’d be interested; she’d also mentioned that she was nearly done with the comments on my current round of revisions. I was understandably excited, and I emailed her back and also mentioned a project I’d conceived that day, a project that might be the best or the worst idea I’ve had in a while, an alternative-history early 60s nuclear war-type dealie.

I didn’t hear back from her at all that next week.

The week after that, I got an email on Thursday apologizing for her tardiness and thanking me for my patience; it said she’d been backed up and hoped to be done with my revisions soon. I sent her what I hoped was a gracious note mentioning that I hadn’t done all the work I’d wanted to do in the previous few weeks, either.

I didn’t hear back from her.

Now it’s been two weeks, and I figure I’m at the point when I can reasonably drop a note seeing where we’re at with everything. It says a lot for my general angst about this project, though, that I've been reluctant even to do that. I’ve invested much of my life for the past few years working on this, and now I find myself wondering if it is too derivative, or too unconventional, or too long, or too anything. I did a tremendous amount of original research but also used one of the true-life characters’ actual memoirs as an inspiration for a fair amount of the first third of the book; I think it’s a fair use of the material, but now I’m wondering. I made some major changes to the middle part and rewrote several scenes as if they were diary entries from a notorious Nazi named Karl Frank; I think it was edgy but well-written, but now I’m wondering. I cut 5,000 words from the last part but didn’t change the overall plot; I think it was the right decision, but now…well, you get the point. At any rate, I’m a bottomless pit when it comes to validation, so anything other than a full-court press of attention would probably be insufficient salve for my ego; I don’t think I’m asking for that, but I have gotten to the point when I feel a little pang of angst when I check my hotmail account and see that she hasn’t sent the revisions yet, so it would at least be nice to get some information to replace the imagination.

Anyway, I finally wrote the email on Thursday and didn’t hear anything on Friday; I didn’t see anything yesterday, but she might be finishing up, so I’ll try to wait until close-of-business Monday before I start hyperventilating into a paper bag. (Praying, and staying out of my head, will hopefully help, too.)

Still, it seems funny how the things for which one once was indescribably grateful (having an agent interested in the book) eventually become the things one takes for granted, and then the things one worries about losing.