'My subconscious would find ways to tie it together'

'I discovered that if I trusted my subconscious, or imagination, whatever you want to call it, and if I made the characters as real and honest as I could, then no matter how complex the pattern being woven, my subconscious would find ways to tie it together - often doing things far more complicated and sophisticated than I could with brute conscious effort. I would have ideas for 'nodes', as I think of them - story or character details that have lots of potential connections to other such nodes - and even though I didn't quite understand, I would plunk them in. Two hundred pages later, everything would back-fit, and I'd say, "Ah, that's why I wrote that."'

Tad Williams, author of 20 novels, including the Witchwood, Bobby Dollar and Shadowmarch series, and three short story collections https://www.tadwilliams.com/