Goethe, I believe, worked on Faust for decades... picked it up and abandoned it... Rilke on his Elegies, also, for incredibly long. There's a reason both of these works are masterpieces and the men who produced them are perceived as immortal masters. We steal from ourselves when we pick fruit from our garden that has not yet ripened...

Thanks, for indulging me, @barrydutton. Here's an introduction to my work, if you're interested: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/humble-one-liners-can-teach-us-times-live

Warmly, Yahia