"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers
palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his
writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and
often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a
good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries
again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try
for something that has never been done or that others have tried and
failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only
necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is
because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is
driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help
him."
From Hemingway's Nobel banquet speech