Suppose A. and B. both to have material for a first-rate novel. Both are equally skilled in novel writing. Both are equally conscientious. A. writes his novel for his own satisfaction and to please and instruct others. He is careful and honest about it. He delights in it. B. writes his novel purely to make a few thousand dollars. He is, naturally, careful and honest in doing the job; and he probably takes such pleasure in it as a man may take in doing well anything he can do well, from laying a sewer to flying an airplane. We submit that B.’s may easily be the better novel. It is true that B. is under a pressure that A. does not know and that B.’s work may be affected in ways of which he is not directly aware by the necessity to sell his finished product. But most of the best work in the world is done under some compulsion or other; and it is the sum of human experience that the compulsion to do work which will find favor in the eyes of the worker’s fellows is the healthfullest compulsion of them all. Certainly it is more healthful than the compulsion merely to please yourself. And if B. is under a pressure A.’s danger lies precisely in the fact that he is not under a pressure, or under too slight a pressure. It is a tenable hypothesis that Flaubert would have been a better novelist if he had had to make a living by his pen. Some indirect evidence on the point may possibly be found in the careers of certain writers whose first books were the product of a need to buy bread and butter; and whose later books were the product of no need at all--nor met any. So much for motives in novel-writing. You should write (1) because you need the money, (2) to satisfy your own instincts, and (3) to please and, perchance, instruct other persons. Take a week or two to get your motives in order and then, and not until then, read what follows, which has to do with how you are presently to proceed about the business of writing your novel. 6 It is settled that you are going to write a novel. You have examined your motive and found it pure and worthy of you. Comes now the great question of how to set about the business. At this point let no one rise up and “point out” that Arnold Bennett has told how. Arnold Bennett has told how to do everything--how to live on twenty-four hours a day (but not how to enjoy it), how to write books, how to acquire culture, how to be yourself and manage yourself (in the unfortunate event that you cannot be someone else or have no one, like a wife, to manage you), how to do everything, indeed, except rise up and call Arnold Bennett blessed. The trouble with Mr. Bennett’s directions is--they won’t work.