I tell you I would like to be able to write a story which should show no
egotism whatever--in which there should be no reflections, no cynicism,
no vulgarity (and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a
villain, a battle, a mystery in every chapter. I should like to be able
to feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting for
more at the end of every monthly meal.
Alexandre Dumas describes himself, when inventing the plan of a work, as
lying silent on his back for two whole days on the deck of a yacht in a
Mediterranean port. At the end of the two days he arose and called for
dinner. In those two days he had built his plot. He had moulded a
mighty clay, to be cast presently in perennial brass. The chapters, the
characters, the incidents, the combinations were all arranged in the
artist's brain ere he set a pen to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, so as
to let me survey the field below me. He has no wings, he is blind of
one eye certainly, he is restive, stubborn, slow; crops a hedge when he
ought to be galloping, or gallops when he ought to be quiet. He never
will show off when I want him. Sometimes he goes at a pace which
surprises me. Sometimes, when I most wish him to make the running, the
brute turns restive, and I am obliged to let him take his own time.
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