Comment by KineticLensman

Hitchens was, first and foremost, a critic. Most of the so-called gatekeeping that people accuse artists of is actually born from art criticism-- a completely different group of people rarely as popular among artists as they are among people that like to feel cool about looking at art.

I prefer Stephen King's version: something like "Everybody has four crappy books in them. Get them done and out of the way as soon as possible."