Ouida writes in the early morning. She gets up at five o'clock, and before she begins, works herself up into a sort of literary trance. Maurice Jokai always uses violet ink, to which he is so accustomed that he becomes perplexed when compelled, outside of his own house, to resort to ink of another colour. He claims that thoughts are not forthcoming when he writes with any other ink. One of the corners of his writing-desk holds a miniature library, consisting of neatly-bound note-books which contain the outline of his novels as they originated in his mind. When he has once begun a romance, he keeps right on until it is completed.
Some of our Younger Writers
Mr Zangwill has no particular method of working; he works in spasms. Regular hours, he says, may be possible to a writer of pure romance, but if you are writing of the life about you, such regularity is impossible.[132:A] Coulson Kernahan works in the morning and in the evening, but never in the afternoon. He always reserves the afternoon for walking, cycling, and exercise generally. He is unable to work regularly; some days indeed pass without doing a stroke.[132:B] Anthony Hope is found at his desk every morning, but if the inspiration does not come, he never forces himself to write. Sometimes it will come after waiting several hours, and sometimes it will seem to have come when it hasn't, which means that next morning he has to tear up what was written the day before and start afresh.[133:A] Before Robert Barr publishes a novel he spends years in thinking the thing out. In this way ten years were spent over "The Mutable Many," and two more years in writing it.[133:B] When Max Pemberton has a book in the making he just sits down and writes away at it when in the mood. "I find," he says, "that I can always work best in the morning. One's brain is fresher and one's ideas come more readily. If I work at night I find that I have to undo a great deal of it in the morning. In working late at night I have done so under the impression that I have accomplished some really fine work, only to rise in the morning and, after looking at it, feel that one ought to shed tears over such stuff."[133:C] H. G. Wells, as might be expected, has a way of his own. "In the morning I merely revise proofs and type-written copy, and write letters, and, in fact, any work that does not require the exercise of much imagination. If it is fine, I either have a walk or a ride on the cycle. We also have a tandem, and sometimes my wife and I take the double machine out; and then after lunch we have tea about half-past three in the afternoon. It is after this cup of tea that I do my work. The afternoon is the best time of the day for me, and I nearly always work on until eight o'clock, when we have dinner. If I am working at something in which I feel keenly interested, I work on from nine o'clock until after midnight, but it is on the afternoon work that my output mainly depends."[134:A]
Curious Methods
In another interview Mr Wells said, "I write and re-write. If you want to get an effect, it seems to me that the first thing you have to do is to write the thing down as it comes into your mind" ("slush," Mr Wells calls it), "and so get some idea of the shape of it. In this preliminary process, no doubt, one can write a good many thousand words a day, perhaps seven or eight thousand. But when all that is finished, it will take you seven or eight solid days to pick it to pieces again, and knock it straight.
"The 'slush' effort of 'The Invisible Man' came to more than 100,000 words; the final outcome of it amounts to 55,000. My first tendency was to make it much shorter still.
"I used to feel a great deal ashamed of this method. I thought it simply showed incapacity, and inability to hit the right nail on the head. The process is like this:
"(1) Worry and confusion.
"(2) Testing the idea, and trying to settle the question. Is the idea any good?
"(3) Throwing the idea away; getting another; finally returning, perhaps, to the first.