When I first read A Room of One's Own in a Women's Studies class nearly 25 years ago, I underlined this:
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.
Today I don't battle "some Headmaster" and "some professor" as much as an internal critic and general self-consciousness and -doubt, and Woolf takes me by the shoulders: to succumb is "the most abject treachery."
Who are your Headmasters and professors for whom you would "sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision"?