By Dame Jackie

Before anything else, here’s a repeat call for the winner of my birthday giveaway from two weeks ago:

Carol, please email me at jax AHT jackiekessler DAHT com with your postal addy, and I’ll send you BLACK AND WHITE.

For the past week, every morning my kids have asked me if Winter Break started that day. It doesn’t matter how often I tell them exactly when break will begin (this Thursday); they have to know, right now right now right now, if break is starting right now. Time is irrelevant. So is logic. They have one goal — starting their break — and until they achieve that goal, nothing else matters. (Which is why they also have had to be prodded more than usual to do their homework.) They hate waiting.

And so do I.

So does pretty much every writer I meet. Waiting is frustrating at best and soul-sucking at worst. And it never ends, not once you have an agent, not once you have a submission, not once you have an offer; not once you have a publication date. You’re constantly waiting — for feedback, for offers, for edits, for information, for blurbs, for reviews, for numbers. And when you’re not waiting for something specific, you’re waiting for that next spark to lead to a concrete idea.

Writing, basically, is a boatload of waiting in between bouts of banging out words.

It’s easy to say that the best thing to do while waiting is to write new stuff. But you know what? Some days, that’s a load of crap. Some days, the waiting eats at you so much, the last thing you want to do is write anything at all. Those are the days you want to throw things, or drop-kick your computer out the window, or bang your head against the wall. Because more writing will just lead to more waiting. Endless loop. Wash, rinse, repeat. At least, that’s how it feels.

Yep, I’m waiting on things now, ranging from submissions to marketing information. And I even have a few projects to keep me busy while I wait — RAGE is due 3/1, a short story for THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF HOT ROMANCE anthology is due 2/28, and another short story for the AFTER HOURS anthology is due 4/15. And heaven knows I have a house to take care of, Precious Little Tax Deductions to entertain once they start their fabled Winter Break in a day and a half, a Loving Husband who likes to see his wife once in a while (and whose birthday is coming up and I still haven’t bought him a gift), and a full-time day job. None of these things is enough to completely distract me from feeling like I’m stuck waiting.

So what are things we can do to help us keep sane while we wait? In no particular order:

Read. I find reading things not in my current genre works best for me. So, while I’m working on RAGE, I may read YA, and I may read magical realism/UF, and I might read issue novels — but probably not all three in one cover.

Watch a good movie or television show. My current go-to shows: Battlestar Galactica and Firefly.

Clean the kitchen. Or, for that matter, the whole house. Or, for that matter, come to my house and help me clean, please. (No, really. Have you seen my house?)

Do the laundry. There’s something comforting in the mindless task of folding and putting away clothing that feels good. Maybe it’s just the knowledge that we’ve accomplished something tangible. No matter what, there’s joy to be found in clean clothing.

Eat something yummy. In my world, this translates to “chocolate.”

Exercise. Forget about phermones and hormones and other mones. If you eat too many yummy things, exercising lets you feel like you haven’t blown your diet out of the water.

Get a manicure. Sometimes, it’s nice to be pampered. A manicure isn’t too expensive, and you get to look at your nails and say “Hey, my nails look nice.”

Listen to music. Right now, I’m in a Nirvana phase.

Write. Yeah, I know what I said about writing sometimes not being the thing we want to do while we wait. But you know what? There are plenty of times when writing is exactly what we need to do to get us through the waiting.

What do you do to help with the waiting?