That hits pretty much squarely on the reason I've done fuck all for the last three months: deep down, I know that the book I'm trying to write is likely to be entertaining only to me and is in no way destined to be a literary classic. Life would be so much easier if we could just be satisfied with flogging lowest-common-denominator horseshit like those other guys...
 

You speak the truth...
 

I thought the blog post was a very funny treatise on the house-of-cards sense of balance one seeks with confidence versus, as the hip-hoppers say, keepin' it real. The thing about trying to write even the greatest of novels compared to, say, blogging and/or journalism is, at least it's private until you've had time to tinker with it a bit. Also, with a novel, as much as one may struggle to produce really beautiful, artful writing, the sheer scale of the form would mean, I'd think, that you're stitching together several pieces of a narrative. I suppose like an architect or movie director, you could easily lose yourself in the line-by-line details, but it's also important to look at things from a wider vantage-point along the way as well. Or some shit like that.
 

I suffer from multiple status envy - I think it's just part of being human. I also think you hit the nail on the head by saying you can only write the best by your standards at one specific moment in time.

Unfortunately, I have such mercilessly high standards that most of the books I read tend to fall short of them.
 

I enjoyed the article. I'd love to say topical and concise, but I really want to say "a shot across the bows of the vain wordsmith". Is lol, allowed in here ? I did like the piece tho, but I must be a bit dull because my ambitions for anything I eventually finish would be that it is read and liked. If you give me a prize, I have to come and accept it. I don't believe that is what writing is truly, deeply, madly about. Give me a draft copy of Irvine Welsh anyday.