It is a strange feeling to create characters and scenes and find that they take on their own life, live in your mind.  I can honestly say that I wrote down what I heard them say and described where I saw them and how they acted—and all this in the context of the poetic form used for their story.

The mind is extraordinary—it can be sharp in visualization, acute in hearing a voice, and at the same time be active in resolving or manipulating the technical problems of plot and verse.  I was lucky that it could because as time passed I became only too aware of the huge scope of the project—each story had twenty-one cantos; each canto could be over thirty pages in length; for an estimated total of sixty-three cantos and up to a possible 1,830 pages.

Looking at this, I could see years necessary to complete the work.  What was I to do?