It Doesn't Work Like That

Any practicing novelist will be familiar with the jocular-yet-serious response when someone newly met discovers what you do. "I'd better watch what I say, then, hadn't I?" or, sometimes, "I've got a great story for you." You (well, I) will tend to answer, "It doesn't work like that," because it doesn't. There is nothing more useless than someone else's already highly worked-up anecdote, varnished for eternity.... The whole process is usually much more passive, sponge-like, and haphazard than that. The reader's motive wanting to understand the process of literary creation is, of course, legitimate, but also ultimately futile, since even the most self conscious novelist often cannot properly explain what it is, he or she does, and how it comes about.

JULIAN BARNES