Dear Geist,

I’m getting panic attacks because I haven’t sent out very many submissions to magazines and agents. Everyone else in my Creative Writing MFA cohort have been submitting manuscripts for months, and some have had their writing accepted for publication or representation. I’m a slow worker and I’ll be lucky to even finish my thesis (a long-form creative non-fiction piece) on time, never mind sending stuff out. But I don’t want to be left in the dust, so maybe it’s better to submit work and delay completion of the thesis...? Help!

Dear Tina,

It’s true that you need to submit writing in order to get it published. But there’s not much to be gained by scrambling for publication before you and the material are ready. Writing engages your intuition, your memory, your dreams, your subconscious apparatus. Selling your writing requires you to leave your work and regard it from a distance, to imagine what makes it attractive to someone else and to persuade that someone to buy it. This is a bracing and enriching exercise for any writer, but only when you have taken the work as far as you can.

One caution: Like other artwork, writing is never done, in the sense that one can always find more revising and tweaking to do. As the old joke goes, the publisher’s job is to make the writer stop writing. So be honest with yourself about when you are writing to your limit, and when you are wanking.