Threads of Grey and Gold

by Myrtle Reed

This is difficult, for I do not know. When I so reply, my questioner ascertains by further inquiries where I was educated and how I have been trained. Never having been through a “School of Journalism,” my answer is not satisfactory.

“You must read a great deal in order to get all those ideas,” is frequently said to me. I reply that I do read a great deal, being naturally bookish, but that it is the great object of my life to avoid getting ideas from books. To an author, “Plagiarist” is like the old cry of “Wolf,” and when an idea is once assimilated it is difficult indeed to distinguish it from one’s own.

I am often asked how long it takes me to write a book. I am ashamed to tell, but sometimes the secret escapes, since I am naturally truthful, and find it hard to parry a direct question. The actual time of composition is always greeted with astonishment, and I can read the questioner’s inference, that if I can do so much in so short a time, how much could I do if I actually worked!

This is always distasteful, so I hasten to add that the composition is really a very small part of the real writing of a book, and that authors’ methods differ. My own practice is not to begin to write until my material is fully arranged in my mind, and I often use notes which I have been making for a period of months. Such a report is seldom convincing, however, to my questioners. I am gradually learning, when this inquiry comes, to smile inscrutably.

It seems strange to many people that I do not work all the time. If I can write a short story in two hours and be paid thirty dollars for it, I am an idiot indeed if I do not write at least three in a day! Ninety dollars a day might easily mount up into a very comfortable income.

Still, there are some who understand that an author cannot write continuously any more than a spider or a silkworm can spin all the time. These people ask me when, and where, and how, I get my material.

“Getting material” is supposed to be a secret process, and I am thought a gay deceiver when I say I make no particular effort to get it—that it comes in the daily living—like the morning cream! I am then asked if I rely wholly upon “inspiration.” I answer that “inspiration” doubtless has its value as well as hard work, and that the author who would derive all possible benefit from the rare flashes of it must have the same command of technique that a good workman has of his tools.

The majority learn with surprise that there is more to a book than is self-evident. It was once my happy lot to put this fact into the understanding of a lady from the country.

With infinite pains I told her of the constant study of words, illustrated the fine shades of distinction between synonyms, spoke of the different ways in which characters and events might be introduced, and of the subordinate repetition of contrasting themes. She listened in breathless wonder, and then turned to her daughter: “There, Mame,” she said, “I told you there was something in it!”