The most powerful siren song

Deborah Eisenberg, in an interview in Tin House #34:

For a long time when I’m working on something, I can’t look at what my hand has produced the day or week or month before, because it’s just hideously phony. You’d think that phoniness would be something that’s achieved with work – that the natural would precede the artificial – but it’s actually the opposite for most writers, I think. There are famous exceptions, of course. But generally, unphoniness is what you achieve with work. The first impulse is always a cliché, or something that’s inaccurate. It’s a kind of inaccuracy that is the most powerful siren song, because although it’s very difficult even to approximate something it is actually possible. And you’re so proud of yourself for having approximated it, you think, Well, that’s pretty good.