give yourself the biggest challenge, allow yourself to fear

For my eighteenth book I have given myself the steepest challenge I could imagine.  I did this on purpose.  I did it because I never want to feel anything less than urgency in writing.  I want to feel, in fact, more than a little fear, an ache before the question, Can you actually pull this thing off?

If a book is easy, if it has been done before, if I hear echoes of my own self (or of others) while working, why bother?  This is the attitude that I have brought to each book.  This is how I am approaching this new one—or will be, once the corporate work has settled.

But glory, every time I think of it, I tremble.