About two years ago I did. It was mostly a fear of being a failure & the potential to be successful. After I got over that, I wrote two books in two years and sold over 100 copies each as a first time author. Much of my validation came from posting comments including my writing in places like HN, Reddit, Twitter, etc. The internet voting machine would do its work of what people want to read while I would direct my energy towards something I wanted to read.