Helen wrote:

So, tell me, why does a peerson write it out if they don't care if anyone reads it? As a record of their imaginings? I'm seriously curious.

One reason is exorcism. Don't know about you, but I find that, no matter how clearly I imagine something, when it comes to write it (rather than just writing it down), it's a transformation process that still requires some sweat on my part. It flushes out all the bits I hadn't actually considered, and demands clarification of the bits I had. And for some people, this process is one they have to go through before they've got a story "out of their system", and they can work on the one on which they *want* to be working.

I like to think of writing as collapsing a probability wave: until it's written, it's potentially many stories; only by actually writing it can you find out which one.

steve