The newspaper reporter was trying to write fiction stories on the side and
he thought: "If I can figure out something for a background, some idea or
something that will explain about people, and then have the plot of the
story sort of prove this general idea by a specific incident, that would
be the way to work it."
Thus, when the reporter had figured it out that the city was a mirror
reflecting himself, he grew excited. That was the kind of idea he had
always been looking for. But at night in his bedroom when he started to
write he hit a snag. He had thought he held in his mind the secret of the
city. Yet when he came to write about it the secret slipped away and left
him with nothing. He sat looking out of his bedroom window, noticing that
the telephone poles in the dark alley looked like huge, inverted music
notes. Then he thought: "It doesn't do any good to get an idea that
doesn't tell you anything. Just figuring out that the city is a mirror
that reflects me all the time doesn't give me the secret of streets and
crowds. Because the question then arises: 'Who am I that the mirror
reflects, and what am I? What in Sam Hill is my motif?'"
* * * * *
So the newspaper reporter decided to wait awhile before he wrote his
story--wait, at least, until he had found out something.
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