I was fortunate to meet Harlan Coben at the now defunct Circle Books in Sarasota a few years back. At the time I had one book published and another on the hard-drive. I asked him what to do while I was waiting to hear back from an editor that had shown some interest. He basically said “Write the next book.” So I did. In the mean time the store closed, the editor wanted to make ludicrous changes, and KDP grew like a weed. By the time my first book took off I had the third one done. If I’d sat around waiting for that editor I’d be way behind where I am now.
Here’s another quote from Harlen that I ran across. Its proved to be valuable as well.
“Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.”
– Harlan Coben
So this is me saying thanks for the tip, Harlan.