Writing a novel is a hard, lonely work. You often struggle through a story, writing and rewriting and editing and deleting whole sections because, well, they’re just bad and aren’t going the way they need to go. And when you finish writing a novel, if there ever be such a thing, you have all the worry and anxiety and disappointment of how people will respond.
And then you read a review, like “A Prophet Raised Up for Such a Time as This” by Luke Herron Davis. And you tell yourself this is why you write.