When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: 'Why did success pass me by?'
I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't.