The Writer’s Almanac tells me it was Willa Cather’s birthday yesterday and gave us this quote about writing from one of her letters:
When one comes to write […] all that you have been taught leaves you, all that you have stolen lies discovered. […] You have then to give voice to the hearts of men, and you can do it only so far as you have known them, loved them. It is a solemn and terrible thing to write a novel.”