Fighting the good fight as a novelist

I've always read and heard that the key to success as a soldier in combat is to accept the fact that you will not survive.  Once this basic fact is understood and accepted, then it's possible to move ahead each day meeting obligations as to assignments or missions to be accomplished.

Although the level of gravity is hardly the same, I do see parallels with the process of writing.  Once a writer accepts the fact that he will neither become famous nor rich based on his writing, then, and only then, he can move forward each day attacking the enemy (i.e. the blank page).  It helps, of course, also to accept the fact that the current draft of the current version will be in every instance absolutely worthless.  Once the writer has moved past all that...and persists day to day nonetheless...then and only then something of substance might be accomplished.

And so the fight continues day to day, draft to draft, version to version, toward something of value.