Project Person // Profile #7.5

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🚨 Taking a quick break from profiles and primers to share this personal reflection about my current project. Hope it resonates!

My kids and I have been known to crush some Survivor, once watching an entire season on a sick day.

So as my girls’ softball season ended and the weather got a bit chilly last week, we decided it was the perfect time to binge Season 47, the franchise’s latest. 

After a few days, we had made it to the point of being fully-invested, and then… absolute disaster.

We pulled up Episode Five and realized it wouldn’t be released until 8pm. And then the next episode wouldn’t be released until next Wednesday at 8pm. And then the final Tribal Council wouldn’t take place until… (checking some fan sites…) mid-December. 

My oldest daughter gasped. “You mean we have to watch this like you did in the olden days?!” 

My other two looked at me like I told them Taylor Swift had retired. “There’s seriously nothing we can do about this?” 

Honestly, I felt a little panic-y too. 

We don’t often experience delay these days. Want something? Prime it. Stream it. Ask ChatGPT to just make it for you. 

I thought back to my “olden days” and the anticipation of TGIF television on a Friday night. Perhaps delay could be a good thing, a discipline that could open up a world of patience and gratitude and fulfillment, right?

→ If you’d like to practice this discipline of delay, might I suggest watching the current season of Survivor. 

→ If you’d like to really go all in on the idea, consider publishing a novel. 

Lord have mercy, this process is so riddled with waiting. 

I’ve been writing this particular manuscript for nearly two years now, with seven full rounds of revisions. Then there’s the querying process of getting an agent. After signing with my agent Don this summer, we then wrote a 36-page proposal to send out to publishers.

And then we entered a period of delay called “going on submission”. This is where the agent sends said proposal to acquiring editors at publishing houses, and then you… wait. 

We started the “on submission” process a few weeks ago. Don sent me a list of 29 publishers he thought might be a good fit, and I made a spreadsheet and Googled every one in depth. We omitted a few, ranked the rest, and sent along an email and the proposal to our favorites. 

Don prepped me that it may be quite awhile before we heard anything, so I was shocked and delighted when I saw his name pop up on my phone the other night, just a week after sending those emails. 

He gave me one of those author bucket list moments, where he told me about interest from a publisher and I got to sink to the floor and revel in the thought that maybe this will be a real book one day. 

My husband David asked if we should go to a fancy dinner to celebrate, but I told him no, definitely not yet. There’s nothing concrete here! Just interest. Just a call. 

And now, there’s more waiting. 

Interested acquiring editors will take the proposal and manuscript to what’s called their “pub board”, where they pitch it to the entire staff. Does this fit the publishing company’s goals? Is it sellable? What do they think about me? 

If the pub board meeting goes well, then they come back with an offer. Then there’s contract stuff. I think there’s a celebratory signing and making things official at some point. Then the editor starts their developmental editing work, and you start another big rewrite. 

And then can we go to dinner?!

Nah. They said that once the final manuscript is turned in and approved, it will be another year or so until it’s published. 

(Me, gasping like my daughters: “There’s seriously nothing we can do about this?!”) 

Nope. There’s a cover to be designed, after all! And the marketing team needs to make a plan, the publicist needs to send out Advanced Reader Copies, other authors need to read it so they can blurb it… Plus, the publishing house has other books on their list, and they have to think about what releases are already scheduled. 

Unfortunately, Survivor nor the publishing companies are in business just for me. 

The advice they give people during these querying / submission waiting periods (and even that year-long wait between manuscript delivery and publication) is this: start writing your next book. 

And the thing is, I have an idea for one! I’ve started the research, and I have an insane Apple Note on my phone, plotting it all out. 

But to actually start writing it?! That feels like telling a woman in labor it’s time to start working on that second kid, and y’all should know better than to say dumb stuff to a woman in labor. 

So after this bucket list call from my agent, I then felt a bit down at the thought of a best-case-scenario Summer 2026 release date.

But then I felt a little sad thinking about the book being “done” at that point.

As in, there will come a day when I’m not able to open up a Google Doc and make changes, to send it to a friend and then implement their ideas, to just spend time with these characters and this world. 

And I realized that if I’m sad that something is going to be over, then maybe I should pay more attention to all that I could enjoy and celebrate in the meantime. 

For example: I cannot wait to have a call with an editor to discuss this book in depth (my editor, whenever that day—Lord willing—comes!). I cannot wait to see cover design options. I cannot wait to ask for reviews, to plan a launch party, to say with confidence that I am an author. 

(“Cannot wait.” What a funny phrase.) 

“Fine wine, not Kool-aid!” Don reminds me. 

Plus, I’ve already checked off a few can’t-wait-bucket-list items: wrapping up that first draft, discussing it with beta readers, signing with an agent, sharing with a book club!

If writing a book is only about the day it releases, that’s kind of like having a kid just for their high school graduation. 

There are some pretty big moments in between. 

And about infinity delightfully mundane ones, too. 

I don’t want to miss them. 

David and some friends toasted this manuscript of mine the other day with glasses of champagne around a fire, and I wanted to wave it all off. “It’s still just a Google Doc!” I basically said. 

But I can’t stop thinking about these friends with their genuine excitement and their specific words of encouragement. 

I thought about it again at the gym this morning, at this family-owned business that I know has big goals but who has already achieved so much. They’ve employed great coaches, built strong community, given from their profits every year… 

And then again when my friend Sarah stopped by with her son Caleb, a toddler now talking in full sentences, running all over the house to find my cat…

You’re doing it, I want to tell her. Look at him!!

I should grab a glass of champagne. 

Because when we’re watching Survivor, we’re consuming… and delay is inevitable. But when we’re building a business, raising a kid, writing a book… we’re creating. 

And we don’t have to wait until “the end” for the wonder, gratitude, and fulfillment to set in. 

If we tap into that discipline of delay and pause—around a fire with friends, might I suggest—we’d find there’s so much to celebrate in the process.

In fact, it might just be the process that we will miss one day.

-Callie

🪩 Just for fun: Project Person #2 BT Harman just released a Kickstarter related to Camino Made. His launches are always top-notch. Check it out (and consider supporting!). 🪩

Next week, I’ll share an incredibly powerful story of a Project Person’s bankruptcy and how he’s now using that experience to help others. Stay tuned!