"'A genuine inspiration has visited me’, he wrote to his friend in October… Stavrogin is everything", Dostoevsky wrote in a note dated August 16, 1870.

Once the true protagonist appeared, the materials of [Demons] began to compose themselves around him.

The result: neither pamphlet nor poem but recasting of both, to a cost of another two years of work.

What is it about the creative process that drives the feeling to "say everything?".