Last time I talked about the query process, I mentioned Doubt.

Now, I’ve discovered a new phase: Impatience.

It’s been about five days since I sent my manuscript to an agent. Five days of silence. Five days of wondering whether the manuscript was received. Five days of wondering whether the agent has started reading it. Five days of complete agony.

Last night, before bed, I was extremely agitated. I can’t say why, other than I was really wishing that something would appear in my inbox.

This morning, I feel differently.

It’s not that I don’t want something to appear – I definitely do – but I woke up with a fresh perspective. Going back to the post, where I discuss the pessimistic math of querying, it’s insane how much material these agents get. Just because my material gets to “another level” of the process, doesn’t mean that everything else the agent needs to do will go away. It definitely won’t.

So, over the past four days, I’ve been both impatient and selfish – wanting the agent in question to review my full manuscript as quickly as possible. An extremely unrealistic expectation, considering that most agents can take upwards of 12 weeks to review an entire work.

Getting published is a long process and sticking with it requires immense levels of positivity (from everyone involved). Replacing that with negative emotions, is only subversive of the end goal. I can’t have that. Agents can’t either.

As impatient or selfish or agitated as I want to be about the length of the process, I can only really commit to one emotion – gratitude. I hear all the time that agents need writers. That their jobs wouldn’t exist without us. The reverse is also true. Agents help us, enable us, and do it largely at no cost. Going back to the pessimist math that I mentioned earlier, if we take a deeper look, we see that agents read many queries each year. Even though they only accept a few, they read them ALL.

That’s no small feat. Not at all.

So, although I allowed myself a few days of impatience, those days are already over. I’ll still look at my inbox and fret over whether the agent is reading my manuscript or what they think of it, but I won’t allow those thoughts to veer into the negative. This step (a full manuscript request) is still a large step towards where I want to be, regardless of how long it takes. Even if I’m given a rejection, as disappointing as that would be, the whole experience is a positive one.

It just took me four more days to see that.