John Gardner in The Art of Fiction on one’s innate ability to solve technical problems | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Life by the inch is a cinch. Life by the yard is hard. John Gardner says, in The Art of Fiction that almost anyone, even a novice writer, can solve a small literary problem, for instance in presenting a character or scene. It’s the entire novel which can daunt. So he advises novices to write their stories inch by inch, scene by scene.

Good advice too for how to live one’s life.