Publication Anxiety

‘Opened up a Pandora’s box’, Frederick Stuart Church

In March, in the week my book Pretenders was published, I took part in a joint online launch event with two other poets. I hastily set up a small, folding table in my bedroom and used the curtains as a backdrop. Elsewhere in our flat, my sister was giving my son a bath and putting him to bed. Our book launch host was warm and kind, and the other poets’ readings were full of humour and wisdom. I didn’t feel as if I’d prepared enough, but everything seemed to go fine. Afterwards, friends from far away and overseas messaged me to tell me how much they’d enjoyed the launch. When I went to bed, though, my tired mind wouldn’t settle or sleep but raced on without me, pounding its feet around some unlit circuit. My muscles were achy and tight. Next day, dazed in the classroom, I couldn’t remember things: the name of the poet whose work I’d been discussing two minutes earlier, for example. I still felt an eerie, off-kilter tightness in my chest and a sense of closing in on myself. It was strangely physical, as if I were bracing myself against someone else’s fists.

I felt an eerie, off-kilter tightness in my chest and a sense of closing in on myself. It was strangely physical, as if I were bracing myself against someone else’s fists.

After a couple of days of this confusion, I began to remember that I’d experienced and described something very like this before, and more than once: It’s because I’ve published a new book.

This kind of publication-related anxiety is not at all uncommon. In a 2023 survey by The Bookseller, 54% of debut authors said that publishing their debut book negatively affected their mental health. There are some obvious reasons for this that relate to general uncertainty. Will people hate my book? Will they like it? Will anyone buy it? Will anyone notice it at all? As US journalist and author Don Marquis once wrote, ‘To publish a volume of verse is like dropping a petal into the Grand Canyon and expecting an echo.’ Then there are the more pernicious, personal worries. Does my book include stupid mistakes? Will people find it offensive—or boring? Will they judge me, or disapprove of me? There’s also, of course, the less tangible discomfort that comes from exposing aspects of yourself and your life. This happens, I think, with fiction as well as with more obviously confessional writing. In her book Exposure, Olivia Sudjic asks ‘So why do it? Why continue to write for a living if writing is so solitary and publication is so masochistic, like throwing the contents of your own life out onto the street for passersby to salvage.’ The answer is complex, and different for every writer.

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Publication anxiety can begin well before we get to the point of publication. At its worst, the fear of negative judgement or attack can stop us from writing anything at all. I think our online existences can, if we’re not careful and confident, exacerbate the problem: we can end up performing sanitised, non-offensive, surveilled versions of ourselves, or getting stuck in prefabricated viewpoints that don’t allow space for the messy, honest, discursive, partially private process of self-knowledge and growth. And then there’s the misogyny that thrives in digital spaces, often demanding women ‘open up’ while locking them in hyper-critical double binds.

Image: Javier Quiroga on Unsplash

Much of my progress as a writer has been to do with learning to switch off or ignore perceived criticism. I don’t think it’s possible to write well if we’re paralysed by fear of what people might think. Many writing manuals and exercises encourage us to ‘bypass the internal censor’ and write fearlessly, especially at first draft stage. Morning pages and automatic writing are the most obvious examples of this desire put into practice, and these can be valuable. But what if the internal censor is slippery, not easily identifiable? What if we’re not sure where we end and the pressures that bear on us begin? It’s not always wrong to want to avoid offending others. For me, all good writing is an inherently a social act, even if we’re initially writing for ourselves.

What if the internal censor is slippery, not easily identifiable? What if we’re not sure where we end and the pressures that bear on us begin?

Nearly two decades ago a mentor was discussing a poem I’d written, one of many that used personas or imagined other voices. He asked ,‘What would happen if you wrote a poem where you just tell the absolute truth?’ I’m still considering this question, its knotty problems and resonances. What does it mean to tell the truth? What sort of truths matter most to me, and how can these best be explored and communicated?

So, how can we navigate and withstand publication anxiety? I have a friend who, like Elena Ferrante, uses a pseudonym to avoid exposure. I remember an ex, many years ago, writing a long and detailed response to all the potential criticisms he thought his novel in progress might attract as a way of keeping those worries at bay. Over the years I’ve gradually learned to mute the hyper-critical and acceptance-seeking parts of myself when I’m writing, especially in the early stages. And publication, while terrifying, can actually be part of the solution.

My book is out in the world. There are many horrors and disasters happening in the world, but none of them have anything to do with my book. Months pass, and I’m still carrying on just as before: teaching, learning to drive, building a website, making oven chips, reading story after story after story to a child who refuses to go to sleep. Some people seem to enjoy what I’ve made in my book, some don’t. Slowly, I begin to think about what to write next.

For more support with your writing life, find out about my teaching, mentoring and editing or get in touch at info@katepotts.net.

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