All--all
my pretty ones--had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably
like a schoolboy's watch. I might be compared to a cricketer of
many years' standing who should never have made a run. Anybody can
write a short story--a bad one, I mean--who has industry and paper
and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad
novel. It is the length that kills.
The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend
days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to
blot. Not so the beginner. Human nature has certain rights;
instinct--the instinct of self-preservation--forbids that any man
(cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory)
should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a
period to be measured in weeks. There must be something for hope
to feed upon. The beginner must have a slant of wind, a lucky vein
must be running, he must be in one of those hours when the words
come and the phrases balance of themselves--EVEN TO BEGIN. And
having begun, what a dread looking forward is that until the book
shall be accomplished! For so long a time, the slant is to
continue unchanged, the vein to keep running, for so long a time
you must keep at command the same quality of style: for so long a
time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always
vigorous! I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every
three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat--not
possibly of literature--but at least of physical and moral
endurance and the courage of Ajax.
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