Film critic James Rocchi has written one of my favorite blog posts of the year:
We write because we have to; we write because we want to. It’s an act of insecurity, in its initial impulse – I matter! Hey! Over here! — but you have to discard that and know that what you’re saying is of interest not because it’s loud or frenetic or an expression of yourself but rather because it contains something ultimately worth saying, and something that would be worth saying even if someone other than you were saying it…Yes, there’s ego involved — suggesting you are without vanity is the most vain thing a person can say –and I think every day of at least 20 people in the field where I covet everything from individual clauses to entire reviews to positions and publishing outlets — but you have to, have to, put that aside and simply do the work when it is there to be done.