You can only write a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a scene. You can only grasp what sits in front of you.

A book is more than the sum of its parts, but you have to focus on its parts. If you focus on the whole, you paralyze yourself. A book is too big. Like the proverbial elephant, you must eat it one bite at a time.

To paraphrase Robert Majzels (who himself paraphrases a Talmudic scholar, I believe):

If you take hold of the smaller, you will also take hold of the larger. If you try to take hold of the larger, you will not take hold.

Want a free horror comic?

Join the Stranger Fiction newsletter!