Driving in the dark

In a 1986 interview with The Paris Review, George Plimpton asked novelist E.L. Doctorow, “Do you have any idea how a project is going to end?”

Doctorow replied: “[No.] ... It’s hard to explain. I have found one explanation that seems to satisfy people. I tell them it’s like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

It’s a metaphor that extends well beyond writing.

How often have we been distressed by our inability to predict the future — that we can only see what’s now, in this very moment?

But indeed, we can make the whole trip this way.

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H/T: Oliver Burkeman