An Experiment

As many of you know, I’m knee deep—well more like waist deep—in query hell. As much as I love having a completed manuscript ready for agents to see, I am driving myself insane!

I check my phone um-teen times a day. It’s the first thing I check in the morning and the last thing at night. I love to hear that ding, see that little number indicating how many emails I have waiting. When I tap that little mail icon and see that I’ve got mail in my account specifically set up for all things related to writing—where my queries are mailed from—I get an extra beat in my heart.

Then to see it’s a reply from an agent—triple beat. If it’s a rejection, I say to myself, “Oh well, he/she has just made way for my agent to come in and scoop me up. If it’s a request, well then it’s time to do the happy dance!!! Which is remarkably close to the Humpty Dance. *If you don’t know what that looks like, Google it right now!*

I’m saying all this to say, I’m ADDICTED! I’m checking my emails at an unhealthy rate. As we all know, a watched pot never boils…or so my grandmother says. Still, the disappointment of not finding any new emails in my inbox driving me a bit crazy.

So here is my experiment:

Starting today, I will not check my emails for a week. From Tuesday to Tuesday. I know, I know, calm down people. Take a deep breath with me…let it out slowly.

I’m very interested to see if I can stick with this. I’ll be completely honest with you all, so if I break after a day—or an hour—I’ll fess up. I’m making this across the board for all my personal email accounts. The temptation will be too easy to check the query email address if I allow myself to check the others. I will have to check my work email, as I don’t want to lose my job. Other than that, I’m going cold turkey!

If I make it to next Tuesday, I’ll give you guys a detail of how many emails I’ve missed. More importantly, how many—if any—were from agents. This is something I’d only suggest doing if you don’t have an agent and aren’t out on submission. No one wants to make your agent wait a week when there could be good new about a submission.

So there you have it. Operation Ignore Inbox has begun!

Wish me luck!

Edit: At the time of this posting I had 5 emails according to the little mail icon on my iPhone. It’s 8:09 am and I already have the shakes! Phone goes back in the purse to be forgotten. *gulp*