Oh, Patience

Okay, I know.  Patience has never been one of my virtues.  I mean, I wait out of necessity, but that's not really the same thing.

I read a thread from one of my favorite agents about patience today.  It struck me.  Here it is:

7 times so far this year: I request full manuscript and author responds "I've just self-pubbed. Are you still interested?"

There's LOTS of great reasons to self pub, however if you're doing it because you're impatient with the query process, well...

 Incidentally, we are a *tad* behind in reading, but these 7 authors weren't waiting more than a month for those full requests. #impatient

 Wow.  As you can see, this is a whole different level of patience.  

As an author, I can tell you that these people probably had been querying long before they sent their work to her.  As an author, I can also tell you that they probably received so many rejections that they thought there was no chance they would ever get there.  

So why not just self pub?

I mean, you can.

But is that what your goal really is?  It does come down to that.  If you don't know what you want, it doesn't matter what you get.

If you know what you want hard enough, you will do whatever it takes to get there.

And when you give up because something else is probably easier and less painful, you'll never know what you might have been able to do.

It's interesting.  I know there's not one right answer for everyone, but it's good to ask ourselves once in a while.