We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing. ↗
The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event. ↗
Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort. ↗