Once you realize there's less logic in human institutions than you once thought, you see the narrative potential in just about everything around you. Sometimes, in fact, it seems as if the human world runs on inefficiency and erratic behavior.

Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough.

I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.

I have always tended toward a lush prose style, but I take care to modulate it from story to story and to strip it down entirely when necessary.

A lot of the creature comforts and the things we take for granted, are not sustainable, especially at current population levels. And so, it's not just simply a matter of changing over to solar. It's a matter of changing our philosophies. Of learning to live, more or less, mid- or post-apocalyptic, whatever apocalyptic means.

Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?

Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing’s quality and your productivity.