'That treads more soft than e'er did midnight thief',
could be abruptly slain by some great conqueror, and we poor human beings let loose, defiant of its thralls! But no such conqueror comes, and Time flies swiftly as of yore, and drags us headlong, whether we will or not, to the unattractive grave.
If any one of you, dear readers, is as bad a sleeper as I am, you will understand how thoughts swarm at midnight. Busy, bustling, stinging bees, they forbid the needed rest, and, thronging the idle brain, compel attention. Here in the silent hours the ghosts called characters walk slowly, smiling, bowing, nodding, pirouetting, going like marionettes through all their paces. At night, I have had my gayest thoughts; at night, my saddest. All things seem open then to that giant, Imagination.
Here, lying in the dark, with as yet no glimmer of the coming dawn, no faintest light to show where the closed curtains join, too indolent to rise and light the lamp, too sleepy to put one's foot out of the well-warmed bed, praying fruitlessly for that sleep that will not come—it is at such moments as these that my mind lays hold of the novel now in hand, and works away at it with a vigour, against which the natural desire for sleep hopelessly makes battle.
Just born this novel may be, or half completed; however it is, off goes one's brain at a tangent. Scene follows scene, one touching the other; the characters unconsciously fall into shape; the villain takes a ruddy hue; the hero dons a white robe; as for the heroine, who shall say what dyes from Olympia are not hers? A conversation suggests itself, an act thrusts itself into notice. Lightest of skeletons all these must necessarily be, yet they make up eventually the big whole, and from the brain wanderings of one wakeful night three of four chapters are created for the next morning's work.
As for the work itself, mine is, perhaps, strangely done, for often I have written the last chapter first, and founded my whole story on the one episode that it contained.
As a rule, too, I never give more time to my writing than two hours out of every day. But I write quickly, and have my notes before me, and I can do a great deal in a short time. Not that I give these two hours systematically; when the idle vein is in full flow I fling aside the pen and rush gladly into the open air, seeking high and low for the children, who (delightful thought) will be sure to help me toward that state of frivolity to which the sunshine outside has tempted me to aspire.
To force the mind is, in my opinion, bad business. What comes spontaneously is of untold value. It is always fresh, always the best of which the writer may be capable. These unsolicited outbursts of the mind are as the wild sprays sent heavenward at times by a calm and slumbering ocean—a promise of the power that reigns in the now quiet breast. Thus dreams are of value; and to dreams (those most spontaneous and unsought of all things) I owe much."
End of Project Gutenberg's How I write my novels, by Mrs. Hungerford