All of which is to say, in terms of any fiction I might write, that the part of me that is most essentially an artist will recognize, first of all, the independent existence of the story, as a metaphysical fabric that has its reality beyond the measure of my articulation of it (so that it isn’t invented as much as revealed), and, secondly, that its manifestations of character and event (like the appearance of the little white terrier that one of the women is walking in the ‘novel’ I just began) arise out of an inevitability that can be sensed (which isn’t to say known), and that, though specified in language, begins and remains in mystery.