Author Anxiety Quotes

I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.

When a book comes out I wonder if one person will buy it. It's agony. Of course it's stupid, but it's agony.

I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.

What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book.

Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.

I tend to write things and don't go the next step and try to get it published. I don't want to do book signings and stuff.

I always feel very afraid as I work on books. It's just so hard to write a decent book!

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

I am never happy when I finish a book. I always start feeling good, and then I get to about Page 75 and start losing momentum - and I kind of pull it together at the end, but by then I think it's just all over. It's become almost a running joke among my agent and my editor - I always say that, so they don't take me seriously anymore.

I'm afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page.

Writing a book is the most difficult, anxiety-prone aspect of my life because the words that I put on paper are very serious to me.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

For me, titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don't pop out perfect on the first try, they can be really hard to repair. Or, worse, if the author thinks they pop out perfect, but the publishing house does not agree, it's difficult to shift gears. And then? Then you go insane.

Once you've published a few books, you drag around this ball and chain of a back list. All the evidence of how few you've sold is there. I think a lot of writers my age have this strange experience of going from would-be to has-been.

...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

Writing about Jerusalem was very stressful; every word counts.

I'm not going to write any more novels. I don't want to end up being one of these angry, bitter writers moaning that only three people are reading him. I don't want that.

I feel like a divorced wife once my book is published and has left me, and hate to be brought back into intimate contact!

I don't know why the world has changed so much that writers are now expected to appear in public and talk about their work. It's something I find very difficult. And yet, one does have some sense of responsibility towards one's publishers, to the people trying to sell the book.

I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.

I feel like every single time I've published a book, there's some little light in me that goes out. I've seen the way people can misunderstand or misinterpret things, if not maliciously, then without a lot of sensitivity.

There's always pressure, a great deal of pressure, when writing, since my first books were so successful.

Come on, man.... Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can't kill yourself before you're even published.

The response to 'A Head Full of Ghosts' has been amazing and thrilling. I'd be lying if I said I don't feel a little extra pressure trying to follow it up.

Part of me feels that I'm letting people down by not being as interesting as my books.