You can���t write a novel the night before dying. Not eve...

You can���t write a novel the night before dying. Not even one of the very short novels that I write. I could make them shorter, but it still wouldn���t work. The novel requires an accumulation of time, a succession of different days: without that, it isn���t a novel. What has been written one day must be affirmed the next, not by going back to correct it (which is futile) but by pressing on, supplying the sense that was lacking by advancing resolutely. This seems magical, but in fact it���s how everything works; living, for a start. In this respect, which is fundamental, the novel defeats the law of diminishing returns, reformulating it and turning it to advantage.

from Cesar Aira, 'Novels Defeat the Law of Diminishing Returns' (1999)