Publication Stress Quotes

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

The worst time in any writer's life is the two months before publication. ALL writers become mental and pathetic, even those of devout faith, who have some psychological healing to lean up against, and gorgeous lives. All writers think that this time, the jig is up, and they will be exposed as frauds.

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

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You're scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.

If the scholar feels that he must know everything about any topic, he is in trouble - and will not publish with a clear conscience.

I'm an academic. It's publish or perish.

There's an old saying: 'No piece of writing is ever finished, it's just abandoned.' But my own rule is: No piece of work is done until you want to kill everyone involved in the publishing process, especially yourself.

I think I've finally learned to stop worrying about how big the gaps are between my novels' publication.

Bad reviews are the bane of an author's post-publication existence.

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.