“I once sat down to write what turned out to be a pretty good story, though only the first sentence of the story had offered itself to me when I began it. For several days I’d been going around with this sentence in my head: “He was running the vacuum cleaner when the telephone rang.” I knew a story was there and that it wanted telling. I felt it in my bones, that a story belonged with that beginning, if i could just have the time to write it. I found the time, an entire day- twelve, fifteen hours even- if I wanted to make use of it. I did, and sat down in the morning and wrote the first sentence, and other sentences promptly began to attach themselves. I made the story just as I’d make a poem; one line and then the next. Pretty soon I could see a story, and I knew it was my story, the one I’d been wanting to write.”