I found this quote on the Writer’s Fest web site, where they have a page dedicated to the rooms where writers work.

Poet, novelist, and musician Brendan McLeod likes to write in the Vancouver Public Library. These are his thoughts when he sits down among the hundreds of other reading and researching and scribbling souls there:

“Everyone’s working so hard. How can they work so much? God, I feel horrible about myself. I should get to work too, otherwise they’ll all have accomplished so much more with their day. I’ll be the biggest failure ever. In fact, I am the biggest failure ever. Did you know Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises when he was 26 – stop thinking about it. Get back to work. Okay, I’ll just check Facebook one more time…”

I’ve been smiling ever since I read this. Just substitute “S.E. Hinton wrote the Outsiders when she was 18” for the Hemingway part, and it’s exactly how I feel whenever I sit down to write. Time is trickling away, and I’d better start right now… as soon as I finish one more blog post.