How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous.

I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel

Original manuscripts are private information. Like personal letters, there are parts I don't want other people to see.

where was I? in remarking that me is the envelopes and not nearly so much so, the often foolish letters inside.

To write is human, to get mail: Devine!

Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.