"Keep writing, because not only does practice improve skill, it gives you more chances to score on the market. I did that for eight years before making my first sale"
About this Quote
Persistence is pitched here not as a romantic virtue but as an economic strategy, and that’s the point. Piers Anthony strips “keep writing” of its inspirational frosting and reframes it as a numbers game: practice makes you better, sure, but it also manufactures opportunities for luck to finally land. The phrasing “score on the market” is telling. Writing isn’t treated as a sacred calling; it’s a competitive arena with gatekeepers, timing, and volatility. You don’t wait to be “discovered.” You keep producing inventory.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the fantasy of the single brilliant manuscript that changes everything. Anthony suggests that talent without throughput is just potential sitting idle. Eight years before the first sale becomes a credential and a warning: the lag between effort and validation is normal, not proof you’re failing. That timeline also implies a kind of psychological conditioning. If you can survive years of rejection while still generating new work, you’re building the most under-discussed writerly skill: resilience under indifference.
Context matters, too. Coming up through mid-century genre publishing, Anthony operated in a marketplace defined by editors, magazines, and paperback lines that demanded steady output. In that ecosystem, prolificacy isn’t sellout behavior; it’s professionalism. The quote doubles as career advice and worldview: craft is cumulative, success is probabilistic, and the only lever you reliably control is how often you step up to the plate.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the fantasy of the single brilliant manuscript that changes everything. Anthony suggests that talent without throughput is just potential sitting idle. Eight years before the first sale becomes a credential and a warning: the lag between effort and validation is normal, not proof you’re failing. That timeline also implies a kind of psychological conditioning. If you can survive years of rejection while still generating new work, you’re building the most under-discussed writerly skill: resilience under indifference.
Context matters, too. Coming up through mid-century genre publishing, Anthony operated in a marketplace defined by editors, magazines, and paperback lines that demanded steady output. In that ecosystem, prolificacy isn’t sellout behavior; it’s professionalism. The quote doubles as career advice and worldview: craft is cumulative, success is probabilistic, and the only lever you reliably control is how often you step up to the plate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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