The Fiction Factory / Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

by William Wallace Cook

A writer is neither better nor worse than any other man who happens to be in trade. He is a manufacturer. After gathering his raw product, he puts it through the mill of his imagination, retorts from the mass the personal equation, refines it with a sufficient amount of commonsense and runs it into bars—of bullion, let us say. If the product is good it passes at face value and becomes a medium of exchange.

Any merchant or professional man who conducts his business with industry, taste and skill is the honorable and worthy peer of the man who writes and writes well. Every clean, conscientious calling has its artistic side and profits through the application of business principles.

Nowadays, for a writer to scribble his effusions in pale ink with a scratchy pen on both sides of a letter-sheet is not to show genius but ignorance. If he is a good manufacturer he should be proud of his product; and a good idea is doubly good if carefully clothed.

Edwards counts it a high honor that, in half a dozen editorial offices, his copy has been called "copperplate." "I always like to see one of your manuscripts come in," said Mr. White, of The Argosy. "Here's another of Edwards' stories," said Mr. Harriman of The Red Book,[C] "send it to the composing room just as it is." Such a condition of affairs certainly is worth striving for.

As a rule the young writer does not give this matter of neatness of manuscript the proper attention. Is he careful to count the letters and spaces in his story title and figure to place the title in the exact middle of the page? It is not difficult.

When a line is drawn between title, writer's name and the body of the story, it is easy to set the carriage pointer on "35" and touch hyphens until you reach "45." It is easy to number the pages of a manuscript in red with a bichrome ribbon, and to put the number in the middle of the sheet. Nor is it very difficult to turn out clean copy—merely a little more industry with a rubber eraser, or perhaps the re-writing of an occasional sheet.

After a manuscript is written, the number of words computed, and a publication selected wherewith to try its fortunes, a record should be made. Very early in his literary career Edwards devised a scheme for keeping track of his manuscripts. He had a thousand slips printed and bound strongly into two books of 500 slips each. Each slip consisted of a stub for the record and a form letter, with perforations so that they could easily be torn apart.

Record of Ms., No. ...... Title.......................... Class.......................... No. Words...................... Sent to........Date............ Returned......Condition........ Sent to........Date............ Returned......Condition........ Sent to........Date............ Returned......Condition........ Sent to........Date............ Returned......Condition........ Accepted....................... Am't paid......Date............ Remarks........................ ...............................

411 Blank Street, Chicago, Ill.,........189.. Editor............. ................. .................. Dear Sir: The inclosed Ms., entitled.. ............................... containing about.........words, and signed..................... is offered at your usual rates. If not available please return. Stamped and addressed envelope inclosed. Very truly yours, John Milton Edwards.

Every manuscript was numbered and the numbers, running consecutively, were placed in the upper right-hand corners of the stubs. This made it easy to refer to the particular stub which held the record of a returned story.