The Undiscovered Country

Wait is A Four Letter Word

Judging by the above title and the title of the previous entry, I wonder if I could start a whole series on four-letter words. It would certainly provide me with so many ideas, I'd never have another reason or excuse not to write another entry.

I wrote on Twitter a while back: "One of my weaknesses is impatience. I want to know a lot of things, but I don't want to take the time required to learn it."

To add to that, the singular frustrating part about writing and submitting said writing to agents, magazines, publishers and/or contests is the waiting for results.

The fantasy contest I entered closed almost two weeks ago, and -- although it said judging could take up to four weeks -- I still can't stop checking my email at least once a day, only to find out the results aren't in, yet.

There are really no winners or losers in this particular contest, because it's based on points. Plus only one other person besides me entered.

I liked my story enough that I decided to submit it to Writers Digest Annual Writing Competition. I had to rework it quite a bit, because the maximum word count is 4,000 words, and my original story ended up close to 5,000.

I don't hold out much hope that I'll even place, let alone win, because there will be thousands upon thousands of entries. Sometimes however, one must take chances in life, regardless of the odds, because you just never know until you try. The problem is I won't know anything until October, and even then, I won't hear a word from them unless I placed. Truth is, I don't even care about the prizes (and they are substantial). I'm looking for bragging rights -- something I can add to my query letters (once I get off my tush and actually submit them, that is).

I'm not being lazy, honest. I'm actually waiting. Yep. Waiting. On purpose, and I'm not chewing my fingernails to the quick as I wait. Nor am I sitting idle. Well, I am, literally, because I can't write while I'm standing up. At least not very well. Since I signed up for a writers conference in August, I decided to go through my novels one more time as well as write what people call "One Sheets," which is similar to a combination of a resume and query letter. Perhaps I'm making excuses to procrastinate more, I'm holding off on querying agents until after the conference.

So all this hate for waiting is 100% my own doing. I gots no one else to blame but me.