You Can Write Better Than This!

While a rock quarry's worth of research was chipped away at in the formulation of this work, much of the narrative has been trapped inside me awaiting release since the beginning of my career.
--from Joshua Brown's Backstage Wall Street

Long-time QWT readers should see several problems in this awful sentence:

1) Passive voice: was chipped away, has been trapped. Change to active voice.

2) Poor arrangement of prepositional phrases: Two examples:

a) since the beginning of my career is a standard introductory prepositional phrase. The fact that it languishes at the end of this sentence will confuse readers. Consider placing it at the beginning, or eliminating it entirely.

b) Terrible phrases like was chipped away at should never survive editing. Really now.

3) Needless words: The phrases in the formulation of this work, and a rock quarry's worth of research are too wordy. Strip them down. Don't shovel words onto your readers.

One possible sentence repair idea: Consider replacing

While a rock quarry's worth of research was chipped away at in the formulation of this work

with

Writing this book involved a mountain of research.

It's the same information in half as many words.

Once again, let me remind readers: this is a published author with a popular blog and best-selling book. And yet you can write better than this. Get to it.