What your best work looks like.

I've enjoyed perusing through John Holt's "What Do I Do Monday?". Very little is as interesting to me as reading about educational philosophies and practices. John Holt is considered one of the greats in this field. On page 244, he makes the following observation about his writing thatI think it is applicable to all the arts.

This happens to me, as I think it must to every writer. When I read over, now and then, some of what seems to me my best work, I often think, as if seeing it for the first time, "But this is good!" I sometimes think, "Did I really write that?" It is almost more as if it was written through me than by me, if that makes any sense. The effect of this is to make me very dissatisfied, as I write, with anything that seems much less good. From what I feel is my best writing in the past I get a standard that I want all my work in the present to reach.