At some point in time I read/heard this story.  I’m not sure where and I’ve been looking for it since, but it goes like this:

“a great and dedicated scholar dies and finds himself in a large and beautiful library.  He nearly faints in happiness as his eyes grope over the shelves before him, but when he reaches for a book he finds that he cannot dislodge it from the shelf.  Every book he reaches for is the same and eventually he is an exhausted mass of disappointment and frustration.  It is at this point that God appears to him and asks him how he is getting along.

He says, ‘This is more like a hell than heaven.  These are all the books I ever hoped to find but I cannot look at them.’

God nods knowingly and says, ‘that is because these are all the books you were supposed to write in your life.'”

Or something like that.  I’m not sure if you know, but I’m not really a very schmaltzy character and yet I have never been able to get this little story out of my mind.  Once I finished and bound a book of my own and mixed it into the other books on my shelves, the deal was sealed.  I suppose it may have been sealed long ago when stories constantly ran through my child mind and I first put some of them to paper.  Sigh–don’t have any of those anymore.  I was a paranoid little brat; destroyed them all.  Now, I must get the stories out, whether writing or drawing, but for everyone that is finished two more spring up in its place.