In the first draft of my novel Cutting Stone, for instance, I opened with the sentence, “It took a hundred and twelve bottles of champagne to see the young Poindexters off to Arizona.” A page later one character whispered to another that young Mr. Poindexter had “consumption.” I worked on this book for a year (taking my characters off to Arizona where they dealt with the desert heat, thirst, alcoholism, loss of religion, and the development of mining interests and the building trade) before I saw the connection between “consumption” and “champagne.” When I understood that simple link, I understood the overarching theme—surely latent in the idea from the moment it had taken hold of me—between tuberculosis, spiritual thirst, consumerism, and addiction, all issues of “consumption.”

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edit…, loc. 653