I can no longer remember when I copied out this Gene Wolfe quote or from what source I plucked it, but it still feels as true to me now as it was back then … whenever that happened to be. (And if anyone can place the provenance, please raise your hand!)

I don’t think that for any reason except dire economic necessity a writer ought to send out material merely because it’s salable. I think he hurts himself; he hurts the field; he hurts the publication in which the material appears. Mere saleability is the ethics of a KMart. I think writing is an art, and without trying to be too pretentious, I think it ought to have a better set of ethics than an army/navy store.

This comes to mind whenever I think I’ve completed a sufficient number of drafts to feel comfortable releasing a story into the wild.

Because an inner voice then pipes up, asking, “Are you sure?”