The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: just do it; get something, anything, onto the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticize them later. You give this advice but can’t always take it. You dread setting off down any one narrative path, because you know your choice will make most of the others impossible. Select one, write it, and it begins to seem in some sense preordained, natural, correct; the other options fade from memory. Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing. … We don’t want to choose; we want to keep open all the possibilities, fill a lifetime with fresh and less-than-final versions.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 44