On not being Tolstoy

Ah yes, Tolstoy. There are many reasons why it took me so long to write my eighth novel, On Hampstead Heath, and not being Tolstoy is one of the main ones. It would be silly to suggest that not being Tolstoy came as a sudden revelation. After all, I'd spent my entire life not being him. But a year or so into writing the book, what had been a nagging concern at the back of my mind since I first set out as a writer became a paralysing obstacle. I would sit there, gazing at the screen and those perfectly good words arranged into perfectly good sentences, and I'd ask myself, why? Why was I adding more of the same to a world already overflowing with those perfectly good words formed into perfectly good sentences? There had to be other things I could do, other jobs where I wouldn't constantly be measuring myself against impossible standards?