Mindy Carlson

That’s a weird term, “Under Submission.” Under = In an existent state of. Submission = Consideration or Judgement.

There’s a nebulous quality to that phrase that can’t quit convey how emotionally fraught it is to be “Under Submission.”

To be “Under Submission” means your agent wrote a pitch (essentially a much better written query) and sent it out to a select list of editors inside different publishing houses. If the editors find the pitch interesting, they ask your agent to send your entire book.

The response to a pitch can take awhile. Or it can take a few hours. But after the editors have your book it can takes weeks or months before an author hears anything. Especially if you tell your agent you don’t want to hear if an editor passes.

So you wait. And even if you hear right away (like I did) that publishers want to read your whole book, you still have to wait to hear back about an offer (still waiting). It’s somewhat like waiting to hear from agents during the querying journey, but worse because you’re so close to the goal of having your book published. I have a whole different understanding of the cliché “so close and yet, so far away.”

Other authors, published and unpublished, have offered suggestions for keeping my mind busy during the wait. Write your next book. Go for walks. Talk to people. I’ve opted for writing my next book. Actually my third book. My “next” book is ready for editing, so I’m doing that, too. It’s also spring here so I’ve been waking up the garden and getting my vegetables in.

But it only manages to push down the anticipation to a low hum, like background noise. But I can live with that kind of background noise as I work towards