For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way that has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

-Ernest Hemingway from T&W book Illuminations: Great Writers on Writing