A Writer's Writer

Michelangelo believed the sculpture already existed within the marble.

Mathematicians often speak of discovering truths rather than inventing them.

Writers, too, like to say that characters "took over" or that a story "wanted to be told."

What if they are all describing the same phenomenon?

Every possible story already exists as a potential arrangement of language, just as every sculpture exists as a potential form within stone. The author's gift is not the ability to create possibility but the ability to recognize coherence.

An oeuvre is the complete body of work produced by an artist, writer, or composer over the course of their lifetime. It refers to their total output taken as a whole, rather than an individual piece.

The oeuvre precedes the books in the same way that the sculpture precedes the chisel.