In order to understand the question of what literature is, we must understand where literature begins.

The birthplace of all literature is a dark room. But despite its blackness, we must not assume this room is empty. Oh, no. The room is tightly packed. It sloshes and jostles, and tiny sparks flicker and snap through the shadows. There are no corners in this room to upset the smooth continuity of the darkness. This is the inside of the human skull and the demesne of the brain: The birthplace of all ideas, including literature.

There is a burst of light as the neurons pulse, brewing new ideas. The darkness churns. Throughout the dank, bits of color, like fallen beads, twist and bend out of the pliant black. They coalesce and stir in the soupy ink, clumping and fallen apart until they find a stable chemistry.

In the world outside the head of this would-be author, life progresses as normal. She walks down the sidewalk, sticking the heavy heels of her boots into the ice. She balances on the icy concrete, reaching out to the cold lamppost to maintain her equilibrium. But the slippery, shuddering feeling the ice imparts on her feet has given her an idea. She has found inspiration.

This is first, and most essential, for this is the essence of all literature.

She continues on her way, slowly and peaceably, sipping peppermint-tinged hot chocolate from a Styrofoam cup and drinking in the wintery twinkle of the Christmas displays all around her. The strings of lights align with those in her mind, and her idea takes shape. Here are two displays so large, right across the street from one another, that they almost seem to be in competition; her plot begins to form. The putty of her mind molds and shapes around the real world, absorbing it, adding it to its amorphous form; this bent reality is the skeleton of literature.

Her husband recognizes that crinkled, bubbly little smile on her face when she returns home. “You’ve got a new idea for a book, don’t you?” he says slyly, leaning over to give her a welcome back kiss.

“Short story,” she corrects, but his assumption is close enough to correct for her. “I know that magazine was looking for one.”

In her mind, the nebulous clay stiffens, hearing the tapping of her fingers on her keyboard. Every rap is a gentle poke, nudging the mass in the direction of its final form. She delicately sculpts her protean ideas into a rigid, fixed shape.

The printer stylus scuds over pieces of paper. Literature is born.

Her imagination shudders. Crumbs of light and color peel from the face of her story, as her mind resets itself for its next work. For unlike the reality in which it is based, literature must have an end.

So what then is literature? Literature is life. It is the unique way in which one person views the world. It is light and color; it is the senses condensed. It is inspiration made solid. It is nothing so much as a single slice of its author’s life—its sights, sounds, tastes, smells, feelings—that they have graciously lent out to us.