"You can't know yourself until you blow yourself." -Van Dregs (from his memoir Love and Coffee Rings Have Permanently Stained My Surfaces)

The difference between a sculpture and a novel is that novelists must themselves create the heat and pressure that produce the blocks of unformed words and, after drafts and drafts, shape it into a still incoherent block that may or may not form into a meaningful mess in a matter of about a decade. Meanwhile, sculptors stumble upon rocks that sat around for millions of years after the earth heated and pressurized them and, attempt after attempt and wasted rock after wasted rock, turn it into a coherent form in a matter of a few years. One is not easier than the other. To be sure, there are plenty of shit novels cranked out in a year as there are shit sculptures in public squares. But to create either that endures requires knowing that what is being created has next to nothing to do with the one banging their hands and head on either stone or keyboard.