Real success is being totally indulgent about your own trip. You put your blinders on about the garbage and go full speed ahead.
So in the first draft, I'm inventing people and place with a broad schematic idea of what's going to happen. In the process, of course, I discover all sorts of bigger and more substantial things.
There's a saying among prospectors: 'Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find.'

