5
Writing a novel purely to make money has a tainted air, thanks to the long vogue of a false tradition. If so, The Vicar of Wakefield ought to be banished from public libraries; for Goldsmith needed the money and made no bones about saying so. The facts are, of course, unascertainable; but we would be willing to wager, were there any way of deciding the bet, that more novels of the first rank have been written either solely or preponderantly to earn money than for any other reason whatever.
It isn’t writing for the sake of the money that determines the merit of the result; that is settled by two other factors, the author’s skill and the author’s conscience. And the word “skill” here necessarily includes each and every endowment the writer possesses as well as such proficiency as he may have acquired.
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.