Flannery O'Connor, from "The Nature and Aim of Fiction"

"I am not, of course, as innocent as I look. I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a 'killing.' They are interested in being a writer, not in writing. They are interested in seeing their names at the top of something printed, it matters not what. And they seem to feel that this can be accomplished by learning certain things about working habits and about markets and about what subjects are currently acceptable.

". . . What interests the serious writer is not external habits but what Maritain calls, 'the habit of art'; and he explains that 'habit' in this sense means a certain quality or virtue of the mind. The scientist has the habit of science; the artist, the habit of art."

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