I was talking to Alan Jackson. He had his second Greatest Hits album. He said, You don't ever get into this really thinking you're gonna make it.
Writing fiction is like music. You have to keep it moving. You can have slow movements but there has to be a sense of momentum, of going someplace. You hear a snatch of Beethoven and it has a sense of momentum that is unmistakably his. That's a nice quality if you can do it in fiction.