Part 4, Section 4, Publication Summary and Analysis

Publication is the primary reason most of Anne students want to write. They believe it will redeem all the hard work and rejection they must endure in the process to be published. Anne tries to get her students to realize the publishing process is truly mundane and unremarkable.

In her own experience with publication, Anne shares her ever-present neuroses. They emerge just as she sends in her first draft. While waiting for a response, she imagines all manner of rejection and ridicule, which never occur. Once her manuscript is accepted for publication, Anne then engages in the confidence-sapping process of revisions. When the galleys, or first type set version of the book, arrives so do the pre-reviews. All of this angst precedes the magic publication day on which nothing special really happens.

Eventually, even successfully published writers...