The Art of Waiting and Letting Go

Traditional publishing drives me kinda batty.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I have been working on my current book for a long, long time.

Too long, by any reasonable standard. One of the most basic pieces of advice that people will give to new and aspiring writers is that they have to finish things, then let go of them.

I’ve given that advice myself, more times than I can count.

And still, I find myself staring down my white whale.

I started writing the book that would eventually become The Unbreaking of Hannah Cole in 2010. I didn’t write it very seriously, but the characters and their stories grew from the genesis of those pages.

It wasn’t until August 1, 2013 that I committed to writing regularly. In 2015, the project earned me a place in the SCBWI Nevada mentor program, and in 2016, I queried it for the first time.

I started working on other things after the initial series of rejections, but the rejections were always so positive (when they weren’t form rejections) and I’ve always felt like I was onto something.

That’s not to say I haven’t written other things (I have!) and I’ve even finished a draft of a whole other novel.