A Writer is Always Waiting...

...for Something

I started publishing way before email and the Internet, and the thing that I hated most was waiting.  Specifically, waiting to hear about a story or manuscript I'd submitted.  I'd obsessively check my calendar and count days, weeks, months.  I kept all kinds of calendars and checked them whenever I wasn't busy.  Hell, I checked them when I was busy, and they started to look as crowded as the Periodic Table (and chemistry was my worst subject).

This anxiety didn't end after I started getting short stories published, because then I'd have to wait for edits and feedback on a piece that had been accepted.  What if the editor changed her mind?  That may sound crazy, but I had good reason to be paranoid: It actually happened to a friend.  And not because of a change of editor or editorial policy. The editor just had a change of heart and decided "This isn't the sort of thing we really want to publish."  My poor friend who had told everyone about her first short story acceptance was mortified and it really undermined her confidence.

Waiting took on ever more insidious forms for me after I crossed over into the Land of the Published. I actually waited a whole year for an editor who'd already published a book of mine to get back to me about the manuscript of my second book. I was too nervous to push him about it in case he'd get pissed off and reject it. After all, I was just a newbie, and he was a Famous New York Editor, and he knew it. When I finally did muster the courage to contact his assistant and make sure my manuscript hadn't gotten lost in the mail, I did hear from the editor, who was very cavalier:  "I didn't think you were in a hurry."

The waiting continued even after something was accepted and edited: when would it be published? When would I see the cover design (if it was a book) and would I like it or loathe it?  I knew enough to move on and work on other projects, but I still felt like the unpublished piece or book had somehow gone from being a treasure to an albatross. And then there was the agony of the pre-publication reviews and the other reviews, some of which I'd hear about in advance, like rumors reaching the Hapsburg Court in the 17th Century of a battle with the Ottomans. Victory? Or defeat?

My life changed radically when I was invited to review for The Detroit Free Press, The Washington Post, Jerusalem Report and other publications.  Assignments were constant and deadlines were tight. Sometimes I'd have to "turn" a book in twenty-four hours: read it and write a polished review. It was great! I loved not living in a welter of delayed gratifications.

My sweetest gig was being the crime fiction columnist for the Free Press for about a decade. I focused on books in translation, paperback originals, books that weren't necessarily best sellers or by famous authors, and I got lots of feedback. People would see me around town, in the gym, at the supermarket and tell me they'd read my reviews.

Better still, the gig got me invited to a Club Med mystery conference with Dennis Lehane, Paula Woods, George Pelecanos, Marilyn Stasio, Donald Westlake, and lots of other heavy hitters in the biz. All expenses paid. For me and my spouse.  I even got a book out of it: my mystery Tropic of Murder (nothing's wasted on a writer, good or bad).

As a reviewer, I learned to edit and revise my own work quickly, efficiently, and ruthlessly when I needed to. Every review I did went through sometimes a dozen revisions of my own. And I even learned how to edit defensively with one editor. Having realized that she like to cut for space rather than content, I anticipated what she might do to my reviews and made them as tight as possible without changing the core of what I had to say. This was an editor who could cut the one graf that was negative in a generally positive review--or the reverse.

I quit to blog for Huffington Post, for a group mystery blog of Perseverance Press authors, guest blogs at sites like Mysteristas and my own blog at Writing Across Genres—and now I publish weekly on Substack about writing and the writing life.  I devote as much time and energy and focus to each piece as I did to my print reviews, but they can be available for readers within hours (and corrections are swift).

All I have to wait for is the inspiration. 

Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay