The Plot (The Book Series, #1)

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Good writers borrow, great writers steal. —T. S. Eliot (but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde)

Midway upon the journey of our life, he heard himself think, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost. Words he had known forever, but never, until this moment, truly understood.

The superstition held that if you did not do right by the magnificent idea that had chosen you, among all possible writers, to bring it to life, that great idea didn’t just leave you to spin your stupid and ineffectual wheels. It actually went to somebody else. A great story, in other words, wanted to be told. And if you weren’t going to tell it, it was out of here, it was going to find another writer who would, and you would be reduced to watching somebody else write and publish your book.