I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again.

Patience is only a virtue when I don’t have to wait for it.

So I’ve finally got my GRIMM book on paper beginning to end.

I’ve been editing and critiqueing and workshopping this thing for a while; I’ve probably edited and revised the first 70K of an approximately 90K book.

I plan to hit my critique group for the last 20K, edit with their notes to the end, and then go back and make a pass through the entire thing.

I’ve lined up beta readers to start hitting this thing after the holidays. And I will seriously consider their comments, probably in the final editing pass.

My point? Even though I’m feeling awesome at getting it to that point, it is by no means ready to send out. I have some concerns, myself, about the ending, so I would want to discuss it with my writer buddies before sending it out professionally. (I’ll say here that I have concerns with the pacing of the ending and some of the specific staging. I’m wondering if I’m overthinking it, or if I really did miss something in the end. Which is why I want comments on it first.)

It’s tempting to go ahead and send it out. It’s hard to wait, especially since my writer groups take big breaks at the holidays, so the wait is even longer.

I’m going to wait.

Instead, I’m working on the next project, doing research for a plot idea for something after that, and researching submissions. Which means reading blogs, following twitter, and putting together query materials, even though I’m saving them in a separate folder for use down the road.