The new author settled on his modern 
chair at his avant-garde desk.  Resolute,
he looked at the keyboard, inserted the 
first sheet of paper, white and blank as pure 
potential.  With one letter time begins that 
a second confirms.  He started with a 
few simple dichotomies such as here 
and there, up and down, earth and sky, day and 
night.  This was enchanting but hardly a 
story.  Next came grass and tree, fish and fowl, 
tulip, rose.  Fine for allegorical 
descriptions but lacking the interest of 
conflict.  Eventually he dreamed up 
a man and woman whose behaviors had
such unprecedented scope as almost 
to forge a sort of freedom.  This was a 
perilous yet agreeable risk.  He 
laid plans for them, but first the conceit, une 
espèce de donnée.  He would set them a 
task at which they were bound to fail and then, 
in the way of authors, sit back to see 
what would happen next.  Quite a lot did.  
It was exhilarating.  The author could 
scarcely wait to set to work each morning, 
checking first the fervid inspirations 
of the night before, then revising a 
bit before launching novel subplots, 
allowing minor characters to seize 
the stage—for they clamored so—and thus the 
thing swelled to that bittersweet point when, as 
authors like to say, the characters 
take over, when the balance tips between 
invention and dictation.  Faster and 
faster he typed, galvanized by suspense.  
There was no end to it, each comic clinch 
bleeding into a tragic catastrophe 
then yielding to romance, pathos and bathos 
tumbling over one another in a 
parti-colored blur.  Sheer complication 
outstripped each inadequate outline  
and he was frequently surprised.  Who could 
foresee such ramified intricacy, 
foretell the sweetness, slaughter, or the farce?