The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success by J.A. Konrath, et al

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Look, I figured out early on that writing is about failure. Almost 100 percent guaranteed failure. You’ll never write it as well as you want, you will always fall short of perfection, a typo will always slip in, rejection is more certain than death and taxes, and, if you are lucky enough to get published, a horde is waiting to happily rake you over the coals. After a while, you build up great layers of scar tissue. At this point, I don’t care what anyone thinks except my readers, who are my only customers. And, in a way, they are among my closest, most intimate friends. So why should I care if some scared writer tries to apply a stigma? If you’re a writer, you should be scared, but if you go around worrying about other writers, you have your eyes on the wrong prize. Listen to readers. They rarely apply stigma. The only labels they care about are "good" and "crap."