The Millions : Don't Talk About Your Book Until It's Published - The Millions

When I was a graduate student working in the philosophy department at Rutgers University, an old academic offered some advice: "don't talk about your book until it's published." Like most other English graduate students, I was writing a novel. I offered that information while giving the man a tutorial on using Microsoft Outlook. My job that semester was to teach the typewriter-clinging philosophers how to use their desktop computers (in 2005).

I had started to tell him that my manuscript was a historical novel set in the American Southwest, but he held up his hand and told me to stop. He said the worst thing a writer could do was talk about his work before it was finished. "You'll talk about it enough after that." He said this was also true for works of scholarship, even though chapters had to be published on their own. But that seemed like a necessary evil for him. He was adamant that a fiction writer should never talk about his book until it hits the shelf. "Otherwise," he said, "you'll kill it."