But often, of course, this advice is like that of
the doctor who counsels his patient to free his mind from all care and
worry, to live luxuriously on the fat of the land, and to make a voyage
round the world in a private yacht. The patient has not the means of
following the prescription. A writer may improve a native talent for
style; but the talent itself he must either have by nature, or forever go
without. And the style that rises to the height of genius is like the
Phoenix; there is hardly ever more than one example of it in an age.
Upon the whole, I conceive that the best way of telling how a novel may be
written will be to trace the steps by which some one novel of mine came
into existence, and let the reader draw his own conclusions from the
record. For this purpose I will select one of the longest of my
productions, "Fortune's Fool."
It is so long that, rather than be compelled to read it over again, I
would write another of equal length; though I hasten to add that neither
contingency is in the least probable. In very few men is found the power
of sustained conception necessary to the successful composition of so
prolix a tale; and certainly I have never betrayed the ownership of such a
qualification.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25