Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is
sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your
intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a
writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild
blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if
you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select
your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.... The
obverse of this freedom, of course is that your work is so
meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the
world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or
ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls
a day. Your freedom is a by- product of your days'
triviality.... Your manuscript, on which you lavish such care,
has no needs or wishes; it knows you not. Nor does anyone need
your manuscript; everyone needs shoes more. There are many
manuscripts already--worthy ones, most edifying and moving ones,
intelligent and powerful ones. If you believed Paradise Lost to
be excellent, would you buy it? Why not shoot yourself,
actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on
which to gag the world?
--Annie Dillard. The Writing Life