This is the perfect description of what is important to me about making art. While author John Irving creates with words, he could just as well be speaking about studio artists: ““You have to know as a writer the difference between how you consider yourself publicly and the way you must continue to only consider yourself a lowly practitioner,” [Irving] says. “Every new page you start, you are a beginner. And I am writing every day to challenge myself, to make myself better and stronger.”
His mouth hikes up, and his voice takes on an amused, challenging tone. “You never see a great wrestler who doesn’t drill, who stops fanatically practicing his best shot. My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.” He pauses for a long time, hinging together two thoughts as if with one of his trademark semicolons. “If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.”
This is his way of saying …that his life as a writer has been about the drills, the practice, the lovely drudgery of putting one word in front of another and building characters and worlds that may speak of their time but will also, with the help of faithful readers, be lasting.”
From an article on author John Irving in Time magazine, May 14, 2012