Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
“All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!”
“All my friends were going off to be professionals, and I said I wanted to be an actor.”