Work, work, work

'The painter Edgar Degas, though best known for his beautiful Impressionist paintings of dancers, toyed briefly with poetry. As a brilliant and creative mind, the potential for great poems was all there - he could see beauty, he could find inspiration. Yet there are no great Degas poems. There is one famous conversation that might explain why. One day, Degas complained to his friend, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, about his trouble writing. "I can't manage to say what I want, and yet I'm full of ideas." Mallarmé's response cuts to the bone. "It's not with ideas, my dear Degas, that one makes verse. It's with words."
     Or rather, with work. 
     The distinction between a professional and a dilettante occurs right there - when you accept that having an idea is not enough; that you must work until you are able to recreate your experience effectively in words on the page. As the philosopher and writer Paul Valéry explained in 1938, "A poet's function ... is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others." That is, his job is to produce work.'
Ryan Holiday, 2016, Ego is the enemy, Profile Books, London.