The relative speeds of the writing fraternity are little short of amazing. Hawthorne was slow in composing. Sometimes he wrote only what amounted to half-a-dozen pages a week, often only a few lines in the same space of time, and, alas! he frequently went to his chamber and took up his pen only to find himself wholly unable to perform any literary work. Bret Harte has been known to pass days and weeks on a short story or poem before he was ready to deliver it into the hands of the printer. Thomas Hardy is said to have spent seven years in writing "Jude the Obscure." On the other hand, Victor Hugo wrote his "Cromwell" in three months, and his "Notre Dame de Paris" in four months and a half. Wilkie Collins, prince among the plotters, was accustomed to compose at white heat. Speaking of "Heart and Science," he says: "Rest was impossible. I made a desperate effort, rushed to the sea, went sailing and fishing, and was writing my book all the time 'in my head,' as the children say. The one wise course to take was to go back to my desk and empty my head, and then rest. My nerves are too much shaken for travelling. An arm-chair and a cigar, and a hundred and fiftieth reading of the glorious Walter Scott—King, Emperor, and President of Novelists—there is the regimen that is doing me good." An enterprising editor, not very long ago, sent out circulars to prominent authors asking them how much they can do in a day. The reply in most cases was that the rate of production varied; sometimes the pen or the typewriter could not keep pace with thought; at other times it was just the opposite.
It is very necessary at this point to draw a distinction between the execution of a work, and its development in the mind from birth to full perfection. When we read that Mr Crockett, or somebody else, produced so many books in so many years, it does not always mean—if ever—that the idea and its expression have been a matter of weeks or months. To write a novel in six weeks is not an impossibility—even a passable novel; but to sit down and think out a plot, with all its details of character and event, and to write it out so that in six weeks, or two or three months, the MS. is on the publisher's desk—well, don't believe it. No novel worthy of the name was ever produced at that rate.
How many Words a Day?
In nothing do authors differ so much as on the eternal problem of whether it is right to produce a certain quantity of matter every day—inspiration or no inspiration. Thomas Hardy has no definite hours for working, and, although he often uses the night-time for this purpose, he has a preference for the day-time. Charlotte Brontë had to choose favourable seasons for literary work—"weeks, sometimes months, elapsed before she felt that she had anything to add to that portion of her story which was already written; then some morning she would wake up and the progress of her tale lay clear and bright before her in distinct vision, and she set to work to write out what was more present to her mind at such times than actual life was."[120:A] When writing "Jane Eyre," and little Jane had been brought to Thornfield, the author's enthusiasm had grown so great that she could not stop. She went on incessantly for weeks.
Miss Jane Barlow confesses that she is "a very slow worker; indeed, when I consider the amount of work which the majority of writers turn out in a year, I feel that I must be dreadfully lazy. Even in my quiet life here I find it difficult to get a long, clear space of time for my work, and the slightest interruption will upset me for hours. It is difficult to make people understand that it is not so much the time they take up, as causing me to break the line of thought. It may be that somebody only comes into the study to speak to me for a minute, but it is quite enough. I suppose it is very silly to be so sensitive to interruptions, but I cannot help it. I sometimes say it is as though a box of beads had been upset, and I had to gather them together again; that is just the effect of anyone speaking to me when I am at work. I write everything by hand, and it takes a long time. I am sure I could not use a typewriter, or dictate; indeed, I never let anybody see what I have written until it is in print. Sometimes I write a passage over a dozen times before it comes right, and I always make a second copy of everything, but the corrections are not very numerous."
Mr William Black was also a slow producer: "I am building up a book months before I write the first chapter; before I can put pen to paper I have to realise all the chief incidents and characters. I have to live with my characters, so to speak; otherwise, I am afraid they would never appear living people to my readers. This is my work during the summer; the only time I am free from the novel that-is-to-be is when I am grouse-shooting or salmon-fishing. At other times I am haunted by the characters and the scenes in which they take part, so that, for the sake of his peace of mind, my method is not to be recommended to the young novelist. When I come to the writing, I have to immure myself in perfect quietude; my study is at the top of the house, and on the two or three days a week I am writing, Mrs Black guards me from interruption. . . . Of course, now and again, I have had to read a good deal preparatory to writing. Before beginning 'Sunrise,' for instance, I went through the history of secret societies in Europe."
Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope
"Charles Reade's habit of working was unique. When he had decided on a new work, he plotted out the scheme, situations, facts, and characters on three large sheets of pasteboard. Then he set to work, using very large foolscap to write on, working rapidly, but with frequent references to his storehouse of facts in the scrap-books which were ready at his hand. The genial novelist was a great reader of newspapers. Anything that struck him as interesting, or any fact which tended to support one of his humanitarian theories, was cut out, pasted in a large folio scrap-book, and carefully indexed. Facts of any sort were his hobby. From the scrap-books thus collected with great care, he used to 'elaborate' the questions treated of in his novels."
Anthony Trollope is one of the few men who have taken their readers into their full confidence about book production. The quotation I am about to make is rather long, but it is too detailed to be shortened:
"When I have commenced a new book I have always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work. In this I have entered day by day the number of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour, so that the deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances of the time, whether any other business might be then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was writing was, or was not, wanted with speed, I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average number has been about forty. It has been placed as low as twenty, and has risen to one hundred and twelve. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain two hundred and fifty words, and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went."[124:A]