Mr. Bennett immediately began to tell him how and the American never got away until George H. Doran, the publisher, who was standing near by, exclaimed:
“That’s enough, Enoch, for a dollar volume!”
(Mr. Doran, knowing Bennett well, calls him by his first name, a circumstance that should be pointed out to G. K. Chesterton, who would evolve a touching paradox about the familiarity of the unfamiliar.)
That will do for Arnold. If we mention Arnold again it must distinctly be understood that we have reference to some other Arnold—Benedict Arnold or Matthew Arnold or Dorothy Arnold or Arnold Daly.
Well, to get back (in order to get forward), you are about beginning your novel (nice locution, “about beginning”) and are naturally taking all the advice you can get, if it doesn’t cost prohibitively, and this we are about to give doesn’t.
The first thing for you to do is not, necessarily, to decide on the subject of your novel.
It is not absolutely indispensable to select the subject of a novel before beginning to write it. Many authors prefer to write a third or a half of the novel before definitely committing themselves to a particular theme. For example, take The Roll Call, by Arnold—it must have been Arnold Constable, or perhaps it was Matthew. The Roll Call is a very striking illustration of the point we would make. Somewhere along toward the end of The Roll Call the author decided that the subject of the novel should be the war and its effect on the son of Hilda Lessways by her bigamous first husband—or, he wasn’t exactly her husband, being a bigamist, but we will let it go at that. Now Hilda Lessways was, or became, the wife of Edwin Clayhanger; and George Cannon, Clayhanger’s—would you say, stepson? Hilda’s son, anyway—George Cannon, the son of a gun—oh, pardon, the son of Bigamist Cannon—the stepson of, or son of the wife of, Edwin Clayhanger of the Five Towns—George Cannon.... Where were we?... Hilda Lessways Clayhanger, the—well, wife—of Bigamist Cannon....
The relationships in this novel are very confusing, like the novel and the subject of it, but if you can read the book you will see that it illustrates our point perfectly.
7
Well, go ahead and write. Don’t worry about the subject. You know how it is, a person often can’t see the forest for the trees. When you’re writing 70,000 words or maybe a few more you can’t expect to see your way out of ’em very easily. When you are out of the trees you can look back and see the forest. And when you are out of the woods of words you can glance over ’em and find out what they were all about.