Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.
No land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth.
If no one heard your sounds then you did not really make them.
When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.
When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.
Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.