“The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters into flesh and blood.”

The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. Then she stepped out to the edge of the diving board and looked foggily into the pool; it could have been drained, myopic Brenda would never have known it. She dove beautifully, and a moment later she was swimming back to the side of the pool.

Michael, the weekend guest, was to spend the night in one of the twin beds in Herbie’s old room, where the baseball pictures still hung on the wall. Lou Epstein slept with his wife in the room with the bed pushed catter-corner. His daughter Sheila’s bedroom was empty; she was at a meeting with her fiancé, the folk-singer.

“You’re a real one for opening your mouth in the first place,” Itzie said. “What do you open your mouth all the time for?”

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.