"Writing is not a race"

If you spend any time around established literary writers, you’ll be subjected to baffling advice about how it’s important not to pursue publication. Don’t be anxious to get published, just work on your craft, and the book deal will come in time.

For instance, here is Yiyun Li complaining that her students care too much about publication:

I have this student—he’s in his twenties and he’s a strong writer for his age—and I was talking to him one time and he said, You just don’t understand me. At my age, I just really want to get published. And I said, Why? Writing is not a race. What’s the hurry? And he said, You don’t understand. Young people have ambition.

And I thought, That’s the wrong ambition. If you get there first, it doesn’t mean you’re the best.

This quote by Yiyun Li comes off as bafflingly tone-deaf because earlier in the same piece, she has already described her own path to publication.