The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Fiction Factory: Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully
John Stuart Mill · en
From 1889 to 1893 Edwards was laboring hard--all day long at his
clerical duties and then until midnight in his Fiction Factory. The pay
derived from his fiction output was small, (_the Ladies' World_ gave
him $5 for a 5,000-word story published March 18, 1890, and _The Yankee
Blade_ sent him $13 on Jan. 10, 1891, for a story of 8,500 words),
but Edwards was prolific, and often two or three sketches a day came
through his typewriter.
Early in 1893, however, he saw that he was at the parting of the
ways. He could no longer serve two masters, for the office work was
suffering. He realized that he was not giving the contracting firm
that faithful service and undivided energy which they had the right to
expect, and it was up to him to do one line of work and one only.
"=Slips and Tips="
One of Mr. White's authors who had never been in Europe set out to
write a story of a traveller who determined to get along without
tipping. The author described his traveller's horrible plight while
being shown around the Paris Bastille--which historic edifice had
been razed to the ground some two centuries before the story was
written! The author received a tip from Mr. White on his tipping
story, a tip never to do it again.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] "Leave-off"--the place where a serial is broken, and the words "To
be continued in our next" appear. Mr. Matthew White, Jr., Editor of the
=Argosy=, is supposed to have coined the expression. At any rate, Mr.
White has a great deal to do with "leave-offs" and ought to know what
to call them.
[B] In these later times, with other hands than those of Mr. Tozer at
the helm, =The Chicago Ledger= seems to have become the Sargasso Sea of
the popular fictionist--a final refuge for story derelicts. The craft
that grows leaky and water-logged through much straining and wearisome
beating about from port to port, has often and often come to anchor in
the columns of the =Ledger=.
III.
METHODS THAT
MAKE OR MAR.
Edwards has no patience with those writers who think they are of a
finer or different clay from the rest of mankind. Genius, however, may
be forgiven many things, and the artistic temperament may be pardoned
an occasional lapse from the conventional. This is advertising, albeit
of a very indifferent sort, and advertising is a stepping-stone
to success. The fact remains that True Genius does not brand with
eccentricity the intelligence through which it expresses itself. The
time has passed when long hair and a Windsor tie proclaim a man a
favorite of the muses.