Suddenly your baby is ugly. Oh no! And it’s even worse than the baby being ugly. You know the baby […] was perfect in your mind. This book, it was gorgeous and beautiful. And then you made it ugly through your fat fingers being unable to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Very deadly to new writers because they get stopped, because their skill isn’t up to their aspirations yet. You need to push through that and keep writing. You need to learn early on that the product of your writing time is yourself. You are the artwork. The time you spend writing will change you. […] The product of your writing time is you. You are the piece of art.

— Brandon Sanderson, The Philosophy of Professional Writing, Scribe, 2025 (via)