Final thoughts

"It doesn't matter what you think about your work. This is one of the weirdest lessons a writer has to learn, that the emotions that push you to write better, with greater accuracy, truth, verve, wit; the despair that makes you cast your eyes to the ceiling and then plunge back to the keyboard; the running pleasure of one good word being followed by a better; the glee as you set a time bomb ticking in the text; the glorious megalomania with which you set out to describe and yes! conquer! the! world! ... are all completely redundant once the piece is finished.
More than redundant. They are dust and ashes. The thing you have written is a piece of shit. Can I say this louder? And then repeat it really, really quietly? The thing you have just written is a piece of shit."
Anne Enright, Review