“Burn those three chapters and every note you’ve made for the book.”
“I’ve already burned them forty times!” he replied ruefully.
“Burn them again. Then in a week, say, if you follow my advice explicitly, it’s quite likely you’ll find a new story calling you.”
“Just waiting won’t do it! I’ve tried that.”
“But not under my care,” she reminded him with one of her enthralling smiles. “An eminent writer has declared that there are only nine basic plots known to fiction; the rest are all variations. Let it be our affair to find a new one—something that has never been tried before!”
“If you could do that you’d save my reputation. You’d pull me back from the yawning pit of failure!”
“Cease firing! You’ve been making hard work of what ought to be the grandest fun in the world. The Quill had a picture of you planted beside a beautiful mahogany desk, waiting to be inspired. There’s not much in this inspiration business. You’ve got to choose some real people, mix them up and let them go to it!”
“But,” Farrington frowned, “how are you ever going to get them together? You can’t pick out the interesting people you meet in the street and ask them to work up a plot for you.”
“No,” she asserted, “you don’t ask them; you just make them do it. You see”—taking up a cube of sugar and touching it to the tip of her tongue—“every living man and woman, old or young, is bitten with the idea that he or she is made for adventure.”
“Rocking-chair heroes,” he retorted, “who’d cry if they got their feet wet going home from church!”