Above all Eliot stressed that the creation of literature would require endless hard work over many years and quite probably a degree in the classics and/or modern European literatures.
via The Writer’s Job by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books.
I agree with the sentiment here and even thought is directed at “creative writing” non-fiction, scholarly writing should be creative and it takes quite a long time to get good at it and to create and polish a book.