How to wait for news (wrong answers only)

In which I explore the worst ways to deal with the waiting, a.k.a. the hardest part of every single step of publishing

I found myself stuck on what to write for this month because I am waiting, which feels common for most of us at every stage of the game, and yet I was totally unprepared for the part of publishing where the waiting gets more intense and worse at each step. Long ago me thought waiting for query replies was the worst, and then waiting for full replies, but she knew nothing of sub and then nothing about how when things start moving, the waiting that STILL happens. How did Tom Petty KNOW? A genius, I guess. 

The standard advice for waiting is write the wait. That’s useful, and how I ended up with a fantasy book, a contemporary romcom, and the first half of a genre blending something. So writing the wait is at least, for me, fruitful, but it didn't make me any less stressed. I found it useful to build a website and social media platforms while waiting, too, but this isn’t going to be about the common good advice you’ve seen before.

No, we are at levels of unhinged that require WRONG ANSWERS ONLY. So here they are, five wrong answers for how to deal with waiting for news. 

To begin with, one thing to know about me is that I truly do love Tom Petty, and I listened to “The Waiting is the Hardest Part” more times than I care to admit to write this particular newsletter. Of all the Tom Petty songs, my all-time favorite is “American Girl,” and my all-time favorite rendition of this was a live Grace Potter and the Nocturnals cover of this song that I once saw at a Hot August Blues fest. Which takes me to wrong answer number one.

1. Go down a music-related rabbit hole for at least four hours. 

   Because the internet is an amazing place, wrong answer number one of what to do while waiting is to explore songs that bring back random memories, your own and other people’s. I won’t go into it, but this is how I re-lived all of Taylor Swift’s break ups and took them so personally that I mapped each one onto a heartbreak of my own, a man or woman who counted as my very own John (give it back, it WAS mine first), Jake (casually cruel in the name of being honest FOR SURE), Calvin (not going to tell you where I was April 29, sorry), etc. Taylor, I love you. NEVER STOP SPARKLING. Anyway, here is one of my other specific finds on my make-a-playlist rabbit hole. 

   Grace Potter and the Nocturnals performed Paris in August 2013: I will never forget the dress Grace wore for this concert. It was gorgeous and sparkly, and had an extremely high slit. I lied, I’ve forgotten some of the details, but I do remember it was white or silver or cream; it was something light colored and sexy enough that I was like damn this woman can wear the hell out of that dress and sing and play guitar. She’s crushing it. I can never hear this song without feeling like it’s a perfect summer night and I have a little wicker bucket hat that I’ve been wearing because in this memory I had been day drinking and bought myself a hat (generally a bad idea but it felt good at the time) and the temperature was perfect and Grace Potter was talented AND hot, and she’d just played my favorite Tom Petty song and then THIS gem:

Grace Potter And The Nocturnals - Paris (Ooh La La)

This leads me to suggestion number two.

2. Use the playlist rabbit hole to find something weird about the internet. 

   Mine was that if I search Mary Jane by Tom Petty, YouTube will suggest the song “Miss New Booty” by Bubba Sparxxx as the next song to play. Does this say something about me? About YouTube? Who knows, but it’s weird, and it took me to another favorite bad use of the internet pastime, which is seeing what google fills in for a search. In the spirit of science, use one search to get to the next, so I will search for the meaning of Miss New Booty and see what I can learn: about myself, about google search algorithms, and about what the internet thinks I want. 

   I did finally learn, from songfacts.com, that the meaning of this song is “country rap and crunk come together on this tribute to women of posterior superiority” and that it is a genre called “hick hop” and tbh that’s all I want to know about that, but you could, if you’re really pursuing a wrong answer, dig deeper in a search process like this. 

The first edition of guesses are not wrong - I do love Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince, though I don’t need google to tell me what it’s about; very obviously it’s Prince Henry and Alex Clairmont-Diaz. Duh. I also understand Miss Congeniality because of my deep love for Sandra Bullock, so that’s fair. And through mistakes I made in my very early 20s not entirely unrelated to my very much feeling as though Taylor Swift GETS me, I’m much too familiar with the film La Bamba. So obviously I know what Miss American Pie is about. But thank you google, this reminded me of two things I love and several people I’ll delight in writing into villains over and over again HAHAHA no one can stop me.

Which actually unlocks bad idea number 3.

3. Seek private, seething revenge in the form of turning over old grudges in your mind to occupy your time. Use them to inspire greatness.

   Find a vengeance akin to Stevie Nicks, in that it is a take-no-prisoners, fork you, I will sing this song about you directly to your face, revenge is so sweet and crooning, “Silver Springs” experience. Obviously, to achieve this step you need to listen to Silver Springs no fewer than 50 times. Good news; I listen to this song every day at this point. Old grudges? I got them, and I will belt out the musical accompaniment to such things while waiting. Nothing says “wrong answer for what do I do while I wait?” like exploring a drama that is long dead. It is almost Halloween, and I am a fall girlie, so I say, resurrect that shit and dig into it to distract from the waiting. 

4. Use google street view to explore 

   Make it something that a. you really have no business exploring, b. Will make you highly emotional and hit you in the feels or c. that will make you pine for not being able to see that thing. For example, I spent a little bit of time google-walking around Montmartre, Paris, because I just saw Moulin Rouge and both loved it and realized there probably isn’t any exciting travel in my near future, and that made me sad. So I leaned into it, and then I google-explored the Gold Brook Covered Bridge in Vermont, because it is haunted and I did not get a chance to go see it when I was in Vermont even though I really wanted to. This made me despondent, which is the perfect feeling for waiting, for sure. Also, I like things to be sparkly and spooky, so I did a deep dive into the 21 Chester Place, the house from the original Addams Family TV series, and found out that I can’t google-visit that because it was demolished and turned into a parking lot in the late 60s, so now I am devastated about that, and about the fact that the 90s movies were filmed using a facade built for filming that was taken down after. So there is no Addams Family house I can visit in real life or on google streets. See, now this is something upsetting to be distracted about. Wrong answers for waiting for the win. ‘

5. Read impossibly good books and curl up into a ball of agony about how I could never produce such genius.

   I’m sure we all have specific authors and books for this but right now this is Hannah Whitten, Alix Harrow, Tracy Deonn, Rachel Lynn Solomon, and Allison Saft for me. I’m just like, will I ever be able to pull physical emotion from a reader’s actual veins the way that Neve/Zinnia/Bree/Ari/Margaret do for me when I read their characters? Is there even any point to writing genre bending romance knowing, as I do, that word goddesses like Megan Bannen and Ashley Posten exist? And how is one to go on knowing Talia Hibbert has books in the world, or Emily Henry, or Alicia Thompson, or any other big hitters that just keep hitting?

   Wait no, I actually do know how to go on, it turns out. This one might not be the wrong answer after all.

   BRB, gotta go read something while I wait, BUT. Expect a newsletter sooner than that once a month when there is news to be shared…

Treat yo’ shelf this month: 

1. The Seven Year Slip: A time slip romance spanning between seven years in the same apartment that includes many tiny treats for those familiar with writing twitter, including the infamous soap fiasco. But more importantly, it’s a romance between a passionate chef and a book publicist who also paints, and how they are both very much beautiful artistic souls figuring their shit out and failing and then also sometimes succeeding, even when it’s bittersweet. Gosh darn it, Ashley Poston is always inspiring me and bringing me to my knees with the romance and the grief and the pining. What an icon. I want to be like her, I want to read more of her work. Just love. 

2. Any of the above mentioned authors; you won’t be sorry.

Stay tuned for a monthly newsletter with updates about what I’m working on every month around the 15th! You can find my socials and other fun stuff here.