We are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite? Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?
Bonnie Friedman (1993). “Writing past dark: envy, fear, distraction, and other dilemmas in the writer's life”