Opening the text

The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfullyCook, William Wallace

Philosophy

The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

Name: The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully
Author: Cook, William Wallace

Cook, William Wallace

Authorship; Fiction

Perhaps I am pessimistic, Brother Edwards. There's no real fun in
  the writing game--not for the writer, at least. Not when he is forty
  years old and knows that already he is a 'has-been.' Good luck to
  you. Hope your book is a success, and if I really knew just what
  you wanted I'd try to whip something into shape for you. For you
  very well know that, if other fiction writers give you incidents for
  your book, they'll mostly be fiction! That is the devil of it. If a
  fiction writer cuts a sliver off his thumb while paring the corned
  beef for dinner, he will make out of the story a gory combat between
  his hero and a horde of enemies, and give details of the carnage fit
  to make his own soul shudder.

  I hope to meet up with you again some time. But pretty soon when I go
  to New York I'll wear my chin-whiskers long and carry a carpet-bag;
  and you bet I'll fight shy of editors' offices."

Another example of injustice to writers which, however, happened to
turn out well for the writer:

  "I offered a short serial to a certain newspaper syndicate. Soon
  I received a letter saying they could pay me $200 for the serial
  rights. Before my letter accepting the offer reached them, I had
  another letter from the syndicate withdrawing the offer. The editor
  stated pathetically that the proprietor had returned and had asked
  him to withdraw it. I then sent the serial to a Chicago newspaper,
  which paid me $200 for serial rights--BUT NEVER PUBLISHED THE STORY.
  Finally I rewrote the story, had it published as a book by a leading
  Eastern publishing house, and it sold well."

Here, again, is injustice of another kind:

  "Once a certain Eastern magazine authorized me to go to Santa Fe, New
  Mexico, and write a description of a Pueblo dance and of Pueblo life,
  and send the manuscript on with photographs for illustration. I did
  the work. And I was rewarded by the generous editor with a check for
  $20! You can imagine how profitable that particular stunt was, for
  I took a week's time and paid my own expenses. But not out of that
  twenty. There wasn't enough of it to go 'round."




XXIV.

  WHAT SHALL
  WE DO
  WITH IT?

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfullyCook, William Wallace

Philosophy

The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

Cook, William Wallace

Authorship; Fiction

Perhaps I am pessimistic, Brother Edwards. There's no real fun in
  the writing game--not for the writer, at least. Not when he is forty
  years old and knows that already he is a 'has-been.' Good luck to
  you. Hope your book is a success, and if I really knew just what
  you wanted I'd try to whip something into shape for you. For you
  very well know that, if other fiction writers give you incidents for
  your book, they'll mostly be fiction! That is the devil of it. If a
  fiction writer cuts a sliver off his thumb while paring the corned
  beef for dinner, he will make out of the story a gory combat between
  his hero and a horde of enemies, and give details of the carnage fit
  to make his own soul shudder.

  I hope to meet up with you again some time. But pretty soon when I go
  to New York I'll wear my chin-whiskers long and carry a carpet-bag;
  and you bet I'll fight shy of editors' offices."

Another example of injustice to writers which, however, happened to
turn out well for the writer:

  "I offered a short serial to a certain newspaper syndicate. Soon
  I received a letter saying they could pay me $200 for the serial
  rights. Before my letter accepting the offer reached them, I had
  another letter from the syndicate withdrawing the offer. The editor
  stated pathetically that the proprietor had returned and had asked
  him to withdraw it. I then sent the serial to a Chicago newspaper,
  which paid me $200 for serial rights--BUT NEVER PUBLISHED THE STORY.
  Finally I rewrote the story, had it published as a book by a leading
  Eastern publishing house, and it sold well."

Here, again, is injustice of another kind:

  "Once a certain Eastern magazine authorized me to go to Santa Fe, New
  Mexico, and write a description of a Pueblo dance and of Pueblo life,
  and send the manuscript on with photographs for illustration. I did
  the work. And I was rewarded by the generous editor with a check for
  $20! You can imagine how profitable that particular stunt was, for
  I took a week's time and paid my own expenses. But not out of that
  twenty. There wasn't enough of it to go 'round."




XXIV.

  WHAT SHALL
  WE DO
  WITH IT?

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

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