Wild Rose is out on submission, which means that editors at ten different publishers are reading it and deciding if it is something they would like to publish. A Good Death was also submitted to my agent last week, having just been completed. Reading manuscripts takes a long time and both publishers and agents have piles of them to get through. So, I was astonished and delighted to hear good news for both books after only a few days. Eve White emailed to tell me that she had bumped into someone at one of the publishing houses who had read Wild Rose and really enjoyed it. And Eve also told me that she had read A Good Death and loved it.
Having positive feedback and so quickly was very encouraging. But I have had to learn not to live by feedback alone. In my former life as a secondary school teacher, feedback was instant and almost constant. I taught around three hundred students each week and from their responses, body language and the looks on their faces I could judge how the lessons were going. Writing a book, on the other hand, involves long periods without any feedback: positive or negative. At times like this, I need to get on with the chapter I’m working on, or the research I’m doing and try not to check my emails obsessively.
In a similar way, at this stage of pregnancy weeks go by without any sense of what is happening with the baby. At the moment, I can’t see it, hear it or feel it. Having felt sick for nine weeks, I’m feeling better; I can just about do my teeth, cook and smell our washing powder without becoming nauseous. Feeling better is great, but there’s less going on to tell me that I’m pregnant. In another two weeks my midwife might listen to the baby’s heartbeat and it will be another four weeks after that before we get to see the baby again in another scan. In the meantime, I have to be patient and trust that everything is going well.
Getting good news, as I did this week, is exciting, but I have to make it last.
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