“Lake Michigan explains why I have not followed the tide of successful writers to New York. I love Chicago, with all its soot and wind. I am naturally optimistic, and therefore expect that within the next decade the Illinois Central will be electrified. Then won’t this spot be a winter paradise? “Nevertheless, it is tempting to use my island as a background for my stories. In _The Inner Flame_ I have gone back to it again. Besides, the Villa Chantecler is a real place--a henhouse cleared and renovated by an enthusiastic young artist and given that clever name. The Chantecler studio was too picturesque an incident not to become material. “However, very little of my material is taken from real life. It is playing with fire to draw recognizable portraits of people; but I fancy nearly all authors are quite aware that they are making composite pictures of friends or acquaintances. For instance, the man who inspired the character of Philip Sidney, the hero of _The Inner Flame_, is a brother-in-law of John McCutcheon; while Edgar Fabian’s personality and mannerisms are copied faithfully from another one of my friends whose character is as different from Edgar’s as can be imagined. It is very seldom that any individual appeals to me as material, but when he or she does, I generally fall. Inasmuch as in all my books there is not one villain, I should not think they would mind. “I have been asked whether I have a ‘method’ in writing. I have--necessarily. Genius has inspirations. It writes in the night, or walking in the field, and burns cords of cigarettes. Mere talent must be persistent and industrious, and can often forego cigarettes. “When I was a very young girl I read something Miss Mulock said apropos of writing which made a deep impression. It was this: ‘An author should go to his desk as regularly as a carpenter to his bench, and with as little thought of inspiration.’ I point to my twenty novels as a proof that I have heeded that direction; for if any one doubts the manual labor of book writing let him pick up any story and copy a chapter from it in long hand. I have averaged one novel a year, yet my maximum period of daily work is three morning hours.