Everything about writing a novel like this is an internal thing — that’s where it all begins, happens, and ends. External events such as writing, as esthetically spectacular as they may be, are just a creative reaction to a great agitation which takes place deep inside the writer’s being.
“As we passed by on the stony causeway, women looked up at us from the fields, their faces furrowed with all known distresses. By their sides, lambs skipped in gaiety and innocence, and goats skipped in gaiety but without innocence, and at their feet the cyclamens shone mauve; the beasts and flowers seemed fortunate because they are not human, as those who have passed within the breath of a plague and have escaped it.”
Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon