I read in a pop-science book called How We Learn that both hard problem-solving and creative projects work best when started as early as possible and interrupted as often as possible. Starting the project, even if you're just making notes, flips the brain into a kind of open mode, where everything seems to have relevance to your project. When you'r

INTERVIEWER:
Do you find emotional stability is necessary in order to write? Or can you get to work whatever your state of mind? Is your mood reflected in what you write? How do you describe that perfect state in which you can write from early morning into the afternoon?

OATES:
One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing

“The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-mediu

"...started the first pages of Tony and Susan, the poorly named novel that inspired Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, one of the most frightening and beautiful films I’ve seen. This line resonated: 'It was the habit of his mind to know the worst case, the ultimate. His life was a scenario of disasters that never took place.'"

—Mysterium, James A Reeves