Here is what he imagined the ideal writer to be like and the terms in which he talked about him:

ONE FINE EVENING, the ideal writer is sitting in the back room of the Sainte-Angèle Bar, when all at once he gets an idea for a novel. He hasn’t written a novel for two years perhaps, and that night, as he sips a Tia Maria with friends in a bar in Old Quebec, this idea comes to him out of the blue.

The idea is far-ranging, yet precise, with two very clear-cut characters, the plot, the tone — even the first sentence!

He says excuse me and goes up to the bar. He borrows a pen from the barmaid. He writes the first sentence on a paper napkin. But then the second sentence comes to him, and he writes it on the other side of the napkin. It’s longer than the first one, but it, too, is all thought out, and he has no trouble writing it; and the tone is exactly right.

Just as the writer is about to go back to his friends, a third sentence comes to him, but there’s no room left on the napkin. He’s afraid he’ll forget it, and he repeats it in his head several times. He senses it going away . . . He has a terrible memory. He rummages in his pockets, looking for a scrap of paper, but he finds nothing, so finally he writes the sentence in abbreviated form on a matchbook that’s lying on the bar.

He leaves the Sainte-Angèle, waving a vague goodbye to his friends. One of them catches up with him on the street.

“Anything wrong? Don’t you feel well?”

The writer shakes his head.

“Shall I take you home?” asks the friend.

He nods.

The friend has him get in his car and drives him home. He asks if he needs anything.

“Five writing pads.”

“Five pads?”

“Yes, five!” he says impatiently.

“Lined or unlined?”

The question sounds like the stupidest thing he has ever heard. He glares at his friend, who says nothing more and leaves at once.

The writer sets to work.

He begins by transcribing the first three sentences on to an old pad and all three stand up; they are well constructed, and at the end of the third comes another, then another. The ideas are jostling one another in his head; they come faster and faster, and he wonders if he will be able to keep up the rhythm. Then he takes a sheet of paper and jots down, as they occur to him, the ideas that will be useful later. And then he goes back to his writing. It’s pleasant and comforting to have ideas in reserve. He writes with a sort of feverish pleasure. Words and sentences come easily, and the source seems inexhaustible. He has the impression that someone is dictating what he has to write. He feels very good. He is writing at full speed, and he is living intensely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .