Rapidly, perhaps, but not finally. Nearly every bit of _Virginia_ and _Life and Gabriella_ was rewritten at least three times, some parts more; and one chapter was rewritten thirteen times. It sounds incredible, but Miss Glasgow says so herself. She used to write with a pen, but now does her first draft in pencil and revises after it has been typewritten. And always novels. “I cannot write short stories,” Miss Glasgow explains. “They bore me excruciatingly. The whole technique of the short story and the novel is different. All the best of the short stories must be painfully condensed with slight regard for the evolutionary causes bringing about this or that effect. Everything that I see, I see in the form of a novel--as a large canvas. I want to trace the process of cause and effect; and that is why both _Virginia_ and _Gabriella_ were a joy in the writing. Those books do not deal with problems. I do not ever let a problem get into my novels--there is none, except, of course, as some problem of an individual life may present itself to the character. I am not concerned with any propaganda. A book should never serve any purpose but the telling of life as it is--being faithfully realistic.” “And realism is only the truth of life told, and is the writer’s true business. Hawthorne was strongly realistic. He did not try to be pleasing or pleasant. He wrote things as he saw them. “I must live with a character a long time. Then the desire to write comes and I begin after that to shape the background, and the details of plot weave into their proper places. I never force myself to begin a piece of work nor force myself to keep at it, when the something within stops. And I never get an idea by looking for one. They just come, always unexpectedly and always at the most inopportune times and places--at a reception, on the train, on the street.” When Miss Glasgow says that she does not let a problem get into her novels, she means that she does not put it there, or consciously put it there. She selects her people, who have _their_ individual problems as she concedes, and brings them into relation with each other and from that relation a problem may arise, probably does. But that is a natural and artistic procedure, the perfect antithesis of the propagandist’s methods. Once to Montrose J. Moses Miss Glasgow talked rather freely about novel writing and her literary ideals. “There are three things a novelist has to do to prove himself,” she declared. “First, he must show an ability to create personalities; second, he must exhibit a sincerity of style; and third, he must evince the capacity for an intelligent criticism of life. Without these he is not worth very much in a serious, big way. To contribute to the knowledge and understanding of life--that should be his motive in writing, not primarily to create a pleasant impression.