The idea of success divides us; it cleaves us. It makes us want to name some great piece of us “bad” and the rest, the undiscovered part perhaps, as “good.” And it is the “good” that will save us, that will transform us, that will deliver to us the confidence of those we admire as well as their material achievement. The “bad” — that old familiar impulsive, groping, gooey, fixated, feverish self that keeps turning up on the page; the self that is “too much” — can’t be dispatched with fast enough.

Yet our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass. It will come from who we already are and how we already write. To love our lives right now — that is the transformative success. To see what is already beautiful — that is the astonishing strength.

— Bonnie Friedman, Writing Past Dark