“Writing has a long gestation because the writer never knows what might prove useful. If he is, as Henry James suggests he ought to be, ‘one of those on whom nothing is lost,’ he has no spare time, no ‘down time,’ no time to kill. A hastily written pen-for-hire piece of journalism may have decades-old origins unknown even to the writer. Every thought, every experience, every book read, might come in handy.”
Patrick Kurp, “They Never Stop Working”