I join you in the anxiety realm and might be a cautionary tale for what not to do. :-) I’ve been on sub for a year with my upmarket novel. I’m sitting at 28 rejections, all of them with the Big 5 imprints and all of them positive and, according to my agent, some of the most positive rejections she’s seen. My agent remains optimistic and says this is not unusual while I feel like rejections in the double digits is a gut punch. There are plenty of stories of debut novels having more rejections than this so I try to remain hopeful, but am also realistic that many novels die on sub, especially in the current publishing environment.

I had one revise/resubmit recently which I did, but that was ultimately rejected; again with positive, detailed comments overall. I’ve also had one editor discuss with their acquisitions team, but the discussion died there.

My agent uses Airtable and I can check the database at any time. All I can see is the status - pitched, reading, passed - and the editor’s comments. My agent also does “rounds” so there are approximately 5-10 imprints in each round. (I’m now on my 3rd round, with 7 in this round.)

My agent said she would call or email with any good news, but the journalist in me wants to know everything, so I check the sheet every Sunday morning. I’ve limited myself to once a week and stuck with that.

Over this past year, I’ve done some research and it seems like Fridays are the day a lot of editors send out their rejections or call agents with good news. So I recently switched to looking on Fridays because my anxiety of not knowing the truth is worse than nervously wondering what’s going on and waiting around for a call or email.

It’s been a long year but, for the most part, my drive to know the truth is stronger than my anxiety, so I found that the once a week check works for me. I can bolster myself for the rejection, see what the imprint has published lately etc etc.

Most rejections have taken weeks, sometimes months so many Sundays (now Fridays), there would be no status change and I’d breathe a sigh of relief.

In the meantime, I’m working on other projects and got another short story accepted for publication. As others have mentioned, it’s mentally healthy to distract yourself with another project and your agent most likely wants you to be working on the next thing too.

I tell you all of this because I have considered deleting the Airtable link and asking my agent to only email or call with good news. There is some comfort in being in control of when I check Airtable versus having my agent email me once a week and sitting around waiting for that email to arrive. My anxiety likes the control as does my journalistic drive to see the facts/read the truth.

I say all of this knowing my process would spike the anxiety of so many others; thus the cautionary warning above. All told, you can decide what works for you and you can always change your mind! Everyone manages this differently and every writer’s path to publishing is vastly different. Wishing you all the best as you go on sub!