From Terence Blacker’s list of what it means to be an author:
- You write a book, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. It turned out not to be the perfect work you once envisaged but, for better or worse, it has reached its destination. If you are lucky enough to be asked to talk about it months later when it is published, you will see it from the outside, almost as if it has been written by a stranger. Your mind is on what you are writing now.
- You long to be part of what is described as “the literary establishment”, but you never will be. Other authors, swanning about smugly at a festival or a Royal Society of Literature reading, may cause a knot of rage and jealousy to form in your stomach, but they are worrying about being outside the establishment, too.
- You are lucky. You are doing something which, for all its agonies and uncertainties, allows you to lead a fuller life than you would otherwise have had.
Rest of the list through the link; he hits on lots of the anxieties and joys in the writing process.
(via Neil Gaiman)