“Nature is my religion; and my desire, my ambition, the great goal I wish to achieve, is to take my readers with me into the heart of this nature. I love it and I feel that they must love it—if only I can get the two acquainted!”
In his article, “James Oliver Curwood and His Far North,” Ray Long gave forth his ideas concerning Jim’s fame:
“My belief in Curwood’s accuracy was based on my knowledge of the man and on my scant knowledge of wild animal life gained on short vacations. To have a man like Thomas Linklader confirm him meant more to me than the confirmation from a dozen Stepanssons, for Thomas really knew his woods. Jim took me one day to the scene of a caribou battle, and from the footprints in the gravel by the shore of a stream reconstructed the entire fight. He could tell me with greater accuracy than any man I ever met in the North, just where we would find any particular kind of fish. He absolutely knew what he was talking about.
“I returned to my desk with still greater faith in Curwood, and from then on published practically everything he wrote. I think I enjoy as much as he possibly can, the announcement that 105,000 copies of his latest novel, ‘The Valley of Silent Men,’ were sold before publication. For Curwood had come into his own. He had won a vast audience among novel readers as he long ago won a great number of magazine readers.”
This in itself shows the faith that millions of people had in Jim Curwood. All who could purchased his books, for they knew that what he wrote was accurate, authentic and realistic. They knew that he had practically lived the stories about which he wrote. That accounts for the great pre-publication sales of over two dozen or so of his novels.
On many occasions Jim was asked just what a writer should write about, and he always came forth with this reply:
“Authors should write only about those people, things and places which they know. This should be self-evident; yet nearly every one of them has almost a fatalistic passion to do otherwise. If you live in a picturesque country village, don’t write about the city. On the other hand, if your life is in the city, don’t try to write of the characters and settings you know little or nothing about. There is no sufficient reason why a Michigan author should write of Arizona. Nor is there any excuse for a young woman who lives in a lovely cove by the sea with a world of rich material about her, to write of what is happening at Newport or Palm Beach. Stick to truth when you write fiction—truth as to details, habits, and settings—even though the story be wholly imaginary. No other books have a chance to live.”
Those few lines explain why Curwood’s works have been “best sellers,” and are still in great use today. He possessed that “certain something” that all writers of fiction pray for—that vivid imagination and forseeable power behind them to keep driving constantly forward. Jim had the courage to fight almost insurmountable odds and consequently he came through. What Jim Curwood started he usually finished. Some advice which came directly from his lips should be well to heed:
“Only those who are quite prepared to labor long and hard for little pay, and without assurance of fame, should undertake to write for a living. A few earn large sums—but only a few. The great majority eke out a bare existence, living in anticipation of the great good fortune that is just around the corner.”
Jim Curwood wrote for ten long years before he was ever able to place and sell a story; at the end of that tenth year, Jim sold his first one for $5.00. $5.00 for ten years of work! He merely overcame those fits of despondency that attacked him through the hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips that came to him. Jim learned to believe what each one said. He kept at his work tirelessly throughout those ten long years.