The Waiting Room

Right now I'm waiting on so many people, so many projects, and so many expectations that I will never die.  I can't.  I won't!

I have no less than six books that are being read by editors right now. (Actually, it's more than six, but I've lost count . . . so I'll just say six.  But I might have to make a count this week because now I'm intrigued.)  And there are also stacks of essays, piles of poems, and a heap of humor floating around in editorial offices around the country, too.  But in the publishing world, everything is hurry up and wait.

One editor wrote me last week informing me that I must wait until May of 2012 for a decision on a book manuscript.  Seriously?  Six months?  In another six months, I'll have written six other books.  Can't these editors keep up with their reading?

Or how about the editor who informed me that he would indeed be publishing one of my essays, but it would be a year from now before it would appear in the magazine.  More waiting . . . .

I'm used to it, though.  I wait on my wife, my kids, my slow-moving parents.  I'm waiting for the cat to die.  I'm waiting for the Colts to score a touchdown.  Thank God, they don't play next week.

I would love it if, someday, an editor would be waiting on me for a change . . . waiting on me to deliver that 500-page-manuscript or that carefully-crafted piece about my four-month Hawaiian travel excursion or what it feels like to sleep in until seven-a.m. on a weekend.

But heck, I'd settle for an article on the empty nest syndrome.  That would be worth the wait.  And my wife might go for it, too.