"Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works"
About this Quote
Harrison’s line lands like a barstool diagnosis: blunt, a little amused, and meant to puncture the romantic fantasy that “good writing” naturally finds its way into print. The intent is corrective. He’s not critiquing craft; he’s calling out a profession-wide delusion about the machinery around craft: gatekeepers, timing, money, relationships, trend cycles, and the quiet tyranny of limited attention. “Totally unrealistic” is doing the heavy lifting here, suggesting not mild naivete but a stubborn refusal to learn the rules of a system writers depend on and resent in equal measure.
The subtext is older-writer fatigue. Harrison came up in an era when literary prestige and commercial viability were already drifting apart, when a book’s fate could hinge on a single editor’s taste, a seasonal list, or an indifferent sales team. His sentence carries the wry knowledge that publishing sells narratives about itself: discovery, meritocracy, the lone genius. Writers internalize that story because it’s comforting and because it flatters the identity they’ve built. Harrison’s jab is that the comforting story is also professionally disabling.
Contextually, it reads as advice disguised as a complaint: stop treating publishing as a pure art pipeline and start treating it like an industry with incentives. The cynicism isn’t nihilism; it’s survival. If you understand how publishing works, rejection becomes less like a referendum on your worth and more like weather: still brutal, but less mystical. Harrison’s realism, in other words, is a form of mercy.
The subtext is older-writer fatigue. Harrison came up in an era when literary prestige and commercial viability were already drifting apart, when a book’s fate could hinge on a single editor’s taste, a seasonal list, or an indifferent sales team. His sentence carries the wry knowledge that publishing sells narratives about itself: discovery, meritocracy, the lone genius. Writers internalize that story because it’s comforting and because it flatters the identity they’ve built. Harrison’s jab is that the comforting story is also professionally disabling.
Contextually, it reads as advice disguised as a complaint: stop treating publishing as a pure art pipeline and start treating it like an industry with incentives. The cynicism isn’t nihilism; it’s survival. If you understand how publishing works, rejection becomes less like a referendum on your worth and more like weather: still brutal, but less mystical. Harrison’s realism, in other words, is a form of mercy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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