We Are Accustomed To Repeating The Cliché,

I Might Spend 100 Pages Trying To Get To Know The World I'm Writing About: Its Contours, Who Are My Main Characters, What Are Their Relationships To Each Other, And Just Trying To Get A Sense Of What And Who This Book Is About. Usually Around That Point Of 100 Pages, I Start To Feel Like I'm Lost, I Have Too Much Material, It's Time To Start Making Some Choices. It's Typically At That Point That I Sit Down And Try To Make A Formal Outline And Winnow Out What's Not Working And What I'm Most Interested In, Where The Story Seems To Be Going.

He Took A Step Toward Her, Than Another, Tentatively, Gathering All His Strength, As Though About To Throw A Heavy Switch That Would, If His Calculations Were Correct, Bring Light To A Hundred Cities And Ten Thousand Darkened Rooms. He Was Going To Ask Her To Dance - That Was All.

There Was Something Unmistakably Exultant About The Mess That Rosa Had Made. Her Bedroom-studio Was At Once The Canvas, Journal, Museum, And Midden Of Her Life. She Did Not “decorate” It; She Infused It.

The Magician Seemed To Promise That Something Torn To Bits Might Be Mended Without A Seam, That What Had Vanished Might Reappear, That A Scattered Handful Of Doves Or Dust Might Be Reunited By A Word, That A Paper Rose Consumed By Fire Could Be Made To Bloom From A Pile Of Ash. But Everyone Knew That It Was Only An Illusion. The True Magic Of This Broken World Lay In The Ability Of Things It Contained To Vanish, To Become So Thoroughly Lost, That They Might Never Have Existed In The First Place.

Writers, Unlike Most People, Tell Their Best Lies When They Are Alone.