“It’s not just writers. It’s everyone. The writer is just an extreme case of something everyone struggles with. “On the one hand, to function well, you have to believe in yourself and your abilities and summon enormous confidence from somewhere. On the other hand, to write well, or just to be a good person, you need to be able to doubt yourself — to entertain the possibility that you’re wrong about everything, that you don’t know everything, and to have sympathy with people whose lives and beliefs and perspectives are very different from yours.” The internet was supposed to do this for people, but it didn’t. “This balancing act” — the confidence that you know everything plus the ability to believe that you don’t — “only works, or works best, if you reserve a private space for it.”