Children wait a lot. They wait for a parent to come home or to pick them up after a soccer practice or a dance class. They wait for a sermon to end or for Christmas morning to finally arrive. They wait for each birthday, and cherish the moment when they can add the half year to their age because their big day is that much closer. They wait for the bell to ring, dismissing fifth-hour study hall, so they can walk down the hall and hope that today when they encounter the seventh-grade classmate they are hopelessly in love with, their eyes will meet in a moment of magic. Learning to wait when one is a child is good preparation for having to wait as an adult. Because having to wait is not something a child can outgrow.

And writers wait. We wait for an idea to run with. We wait for the next time we can sit down to write. We wait for readers to give us feedback. We wait to hear from editors who will accept or decline our stories, essays, or poems. We wait to learn the results from writing contests. Once our work is accepted, we wait for our pieces to be published. We wait to see if we’ve been accepted for a writer’s residency. We wait for phone calls from our computer techs who tell us we can pick up our computers.

My parents taught me the art of waiting, which is probably how most of us learn to wait.

When I was a child, under the age of eleven, my father kept an airplane at the Hales Corner Airport, in Franklin, Wisconsin. My sisters (one thirteen months younger than me and the other four years younger) and I often went to the airport with my father. He would get the urge to work on his plane or hangout with other pilots, shooting the breeze about flying and planes — much like when I’m compelled to write or when I crave the company of other writers, so I can shoot the breeze about writing and books.

Unless my sisters and I were going on a flight with my father, we weren’t invited into the hangar. He would tell us to wait in the car, that he’d be back soon. It was never soon. He would crank down the windows, but heat stacked up in the car anyway, making us too warm. In addition to being bored beyond belief and hot, we became irritated. Our definition of soon was clearly at odds with his definition. We had a tipping point at which we risked his anger and got out of the car. But we never entered the hangar to ask him when we were going home. By a young age, we had learned this simply wasn’t to be done. This is partly why I can wait for months and months to hear from editors without contacting them, even when they’ve stated, “If you don’t hear from us after six months, please feel free to contact us.” I may never hear from them, and still they will most likely never hear from me. Those editors are in a hangar, and I’m not going in there.

At the airport my father always parked close to a tall metal pole topped with a bright orange windsock. The pole was surrounded by green grass, which was encircled by a ring of rocks, all the size of small dogs curled up for a nap. We would climb over the rocks and sit in the grass and watch the windsock as it shifted above us. The cooler air and freedom from the car helped, but our boredom and irritability soon returned. Eventually, our father would come out of the hangar. He might say a few terse words about us sitting around the pole instead of inside the car, or not. But either way we knew better than to ask him, “What took you so long?”

My ability to wait quietly doesn’t mean that waiting to hear about something I’ve submitted is easy. Far from it. I can pace with the best of the tigers. I perform menial tasks to pass time, but I end up feeling like I’m swimming in a pool filled with Salvador Dalí’s melting watches. As a projected date of a notification nears, I check my email incessantly. One moment, I convince myself that no one will ever be interested in publishing my work again. The next moment, I daydream that I’ve won a contest or that an editor has so loved my work, they gush about it, using bouquets of purple prose and ask, “Can you send us more?” (Yeah, Walter Mitty lives inside of me.)

When I first started submitting my work and received rejections, I was convinced I must be a lousy writer. I contemplated doing something easier — maybe washing windows on tall buildings, even though I’m terrified of heights. Then an editor sent me a rejection saying she had almost selected my flash fiction piece but had decided to hold off. She would keep it on the back burner but probably wouldn’t end up using it. It was an encouraging rejection, so I kept writing. A month later, she notified me that she had decided to print my story after all. Perhaps, I thought, I can write.

I keep submitting and mostly receive rejections. But I get just enough acceptances. So, like my old dog who hangs around the kitchen, hoping at any moment that she will get a treat, I keep checking my email, hoping at any moment I might receive an acceptance.

I get so bad about checking my email that I don’t open it if I’m working at my computer, I leave my phone in another room, and I make deals with myself. If I write for thirty minutes, I can check my email. After I walk the dog, I can check my email. After I finish all the dishes, I can check my email. After I’m done having coffee with a friend, I can check my email. If I go an hour without checking, I pat myself on the back, then hurry to check my email. The only reason I will confess this is because I’ve read essays written by other writers who admit they repeatedly check their email, especially when they know the date of an editor’s announcement is imminent. And if a writer submits enough pieces, there is always an announcement coming soon.

I often think of my mother when I’m waiting for an email from an editor. Before I learned to drive, I relied on my parents to drop me off and pick me up from school events, a job that fell mostly to my mother, who was always late. And there were no cell phones. To ease my worry while I waited, I played little games: If I counted to sixty, then she would come, then maybe one hundred, then perhaps fifty. I alternated that game with a counting-the-cars game: the tenth car on the road would be hers, then maybe the sixth car, then perhaps the eighth car.

For me, to write is to submit, and to submit is to wait. I find the more I submit, the easier waiting becomes because without waiting too long, I can look forward to (or be disappointed by) an email from an editor. But I check my email even more — a random reinforcement schedule is an effective motivator. If I have only a few submissions on the loose, it’s easier to ignore my email — at least until a notification date approaches.

I’m currently a finalist in a writing contest and waiting to hear if I’ve won anything. I have a short story set in 1860 entered in a historical fiction contest. My short story collection, which I entered in a contest, is hopefully being read and passed along to the next round. I’m waiting for an anthology of essays to be published because I have an essay in it. I have a short story under consideration for a British journal, and an essay under consideration for yet another British journal. I have a flash fiction piece entered in a regional contest. I’m hoping to hear about two articles I pitched to a local publication.

And so, I wait. I don’t sit next to a windsock. I don’t count seconds in my head or cars on the road. Instead, I push myself to keep writing. To get out into the world. To read a good book. To hear an author speak. To have coffee with friends. To go to lunch with my husband. To take my grandkids to Tom’s Logging Camp where we can look at old logging tools, feed ravenous trout and goats, and be ignored by an uppity llama who isn’t hungry.

And I silently thank my parents for making me wait around when I was a child.

Today after I post this blog, I’ll check my email. Then after I clean the bathroom, I’ll check my email. I have guests coming for dinner, and after they leave, I’ll check my email. (Perhaps, my parents didn’t make me wait long enough before exiting the hangar or picking me up from school.)