" What is the writer to do? I think the answer is, given the writer’s linguistic competence: Have faith. First, recognize that the art of writing is immensely more difficult than the beginning writer may at first believe but in the end can be mastered by anyone willing to do the work. Good writing involves the operation of many mental processes at once, and in the beginning one must deal with those many processes one at a time, breaking down the total job into its smallest segments: getting down roughly what one is trying to say; closely analyzing the words with which one has said it to see what they are saying (or refusing to say); then thinking about (a) how one can make the words stop saying what one does not want them to say and (b) how whatever it is that the words are saying might be turned to account. "

― John Gardner , On Becoming a Novelist