If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen.
Ernest HemingwayYou write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.
Ernest Hemingway