'the fear that your fate IS in your own hands, but that your hands are weak'

'...Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself. This is not the Age of Faith, Truth and Certainty.

Yet even the notion that you have a say in this process conflicts with the prevailing view of artmaking today - namely, that art rests fundamentally upon talent, and that talent is a gift randomly built into some people and not into others. In common parlance, either you have it or you don't - great art is a byproduct of genius, good art is a product of near-genius... and so on down the line to pulp romances and paint-by-numbers. This view is inherently fatalistic - and offers no useful encouragement to those who would make art. Personally, we'll side with Conrad's view of fatalism: namely, that it is a species of fear - the fear that your fate is in your own hands, but that your hands are weak.'

David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art and Fear