I know I’ve expressed a lot lately that I’m struggling with patience as I wait for responses to my submissions and do the seemingly endless editing of my novel. This week was no exception and actually feels like a doubling-down on that since I’ve got no exciting firsts, like first rejections or first submissions. I actually didn’t get any rejections at all this week. While that might sound like a good thing, it only means the magazines I’m currently submitted to take a bit longer to review things than those I submitted to previously.

It is really feeling like a holding pattern, where I just do loops while I wait for something to happen. I edit, and I edit, and I edit some more. There are no new ideas brewing, no exciting new stories building brick by brick in my head. To be quite honest, it’s a boring state to be in and I can’t say I’m enjoying it much.

The submissions are the same. While the process of researching and selecting the next magazine I submit to is hardly exciting, it’s at least engaging my brain to look into new things. But since there are no rejections this week, there’s been none of that either. I fly in circles, just waiting for my turn to land.

I’m trying to remember that while sitting in a plane as it circles before landing is frustrating, progress is being made even though you can’t see it. Somewhere outside the plane, other planes are cruising down the landing strip to the gate, getting out of your way one by one so that eventually it’ll be your turn. The pilot still has a job do: keeping that plane in the air, moving in its steady circles.

So that’s who I am this week. I’m that pilot, working the controls, doing the mundane tasks that keep this plane making circles in the air, waiting for my turn on the runway. Hardly an exciting job, but a necessary one. I just have to trust that the boring, routine work I’m doing now is actually forward progress despite appearances. It’s what will get me to my destination eventually.