Comment by satisfice

I got into a book contract in the 90's and nearly killed myself with stress, trying to write it.

At one point I was told I might have thymus cancer. My first reaction was not distress, but RELIEF. Why? Because it meant I could feel okay about taking a couple of weeks off work to get the exploratory surgery. That's how burned out I was. (Turned out, no cancer. So that was nice, too...)

Eventually, a lawyer friend of mine told me that I could easily get out of the contract by offering to repay the advance. Problem solved.

Lesson learned: don't get into a contract until the book is almost done.

Even so, I just published a new book that I delivered one year late (I wasn't as close to finished as I thought I was). Still it was less stressful because I knew I could take all the time I needed (because publishers actually understand that it's hard to write a good book).