Take off everything that’s not the damned fiddle.

William Gibson 'The Peripheral' by Politics and Prose (YouTube)

The PeripheralAt about 38:40 or so, someone asked about his process,

“Lady: Do you know where you’re going when you set out?

“Gibson: No, I don’t. And it’s when you ask me now, you’re asking somebody who’s been doing it for like 30 years or a little bit more, and I no longer know how I’m doing it. I just don’t. I don’t think of it. It’s like the story of the the old fiddle-maker and people said, ‘how do you make those fiddles?’ and he said, ‘I start with this block of wood and I take off everything that’s not the damned fiddle.‘”

That short story reminded me of a video I’d recently seen,

The Process of Making a Cello. A High-End Japanese Cello Crafted by One Artisan in Six Months. by ProcessX (YouTube)