Getting Out of Limbo

When I was 22 (only eight years ago and yet it feels like a life time) I graduated from my Bachelor of Education degree and took my first teaching job. For the first two terms I felt like an imposter, a fraud who was going to be found out at any second. Partly this was because I’d taken a job teaching at my old high school (where I’d been a student only four years earlier) and was still getting over calling my old teachers by their first names but for the most part I think it was that limbo that comes with starting down a new career path. By my fourth year as a teacher I felt like a belonged in the classroom.

Now, I’ve sent out my manuscript to two publishers. I wrote it, rewrote it, asked other people to read it and incorporated their feedback into my work, polished some more, rewrote some more, polished again until I had to wear sunglasses just to glance at it, and sent it out into the world.

I am pretty extremely absolutely sure that my manuscript won’t find a publisher this time round but in the meantime I back in limbo. I’m committed to writing as a career but I’m not yet published (or getting paid). So I keep writing, writing, writing.

But how do you deal with the limbo stage? I’d love some ideas on how to get through it, because I could be here for looooooong time.