Imagination
Its limits
Another point I may mention. Erckmann and Chatrien could never write a novel of Alsace and the Jura on the spot. After a visit to the scenes they were going to people with fictitious characters, they wrote, but wrote in Paris. They found that imagination failed when on the spot. I find very much the same, myself. I do not believe I could write a novel of the valley in which I live, the house I occupy. I must lay my scene somewhere that I have been, but have left. When in Rome one winter, impatient at being confined within walls, weary of the basaltic pavement, my heart went out to the wilds of Dartmoor, and I wrote Urith. I breathed moor air, smelt the gorse, heard the rush of the torrents, scrambled the granite rocks in imagination, and forgot the surroundings of an Italian pension.
Its strength
The secret of doing well
I repeat, my experiences may not, and probably are not, those of others. When engaged on a novel, I live in that world about which I am writing. Whilst writing a Cheshire novel, I have tasted the salt crystallising on my lips, smelt the smoke from the chimneys, walked warily among the subsidences, and have had the factory before my eyes, for a while, and then dashed away to smell the pines, and lie in the heather and hear the bees hum. It has been so real to me, that if I wake for a moment at night I have found myself in Cheshire, my mind there. When I am at my meals, I am eating in Cheshire, though at the other end of England; when in conversation with friends, directly there is a pause, my mind reverts to Cheshire; and, alas! I am sorry to own it, too often, in church, at my prayers—I find my mind drifting to Cheshire. This I believe to be a secret of doing a thing well—that is to say, as well as one’s poor abilities go—to lose oneself in one’s subject, or at all events in the surroundings.
ON VISION IN LITERATURE
Katharine S. Macquoid
Popular ideas concerning fiction
A popular opinion seems to exist that the art of writing Fiction can be acquired without any natural gift for the profession of Literature; the wish to become a writer is thought a sufficient proof of vocation, although such a wish, accompanied with fluency in pen and ink, is very apt to mislead those who can express their thoughts easily in writing. Diligent study and persevering labour will of course do much to further progress in any art, but it is unlikely that the art of writing fiction can be acquired in the same way that the mere mechanical knowledge of Music, or of Painting, or of Sculpture can be learned by a beginner.