His work for Harte & Perkins, during the year, showed as follows:
| 10 | Ten-Cent Libraries at $100 each | $ 1000. |
| Two "Stella Edwards" stories at $300 each | 600. | |
| "The Brave and Fair" | 500. | |
| "The Man from Montana" | 450. | |
| 2 | Five-Cent Libraries at $50 each | 100. |
| 1 | Juvenile serial | 100. |
| ———— | ||
| Total | $2,750. | |
The work tabulated above approximates 850,000 words, and takes no account of work sold to other publishers. By industry alone Edwards had secured a fair income.
W. Bert Foster, a friend of Edwards', who for twenty-five years has kept a story-mill of his own busily grinding with splendid success, has this to say about a slip he once made in his early years:
"When I was a young writer I sold a story to a juvenile paper. It was published. And not until the boys began to write in about it did either the editor or I discover that I had my hero dying of thirst on a raft in Lake Michigan!"
[VII.]
INSPIRATION
ALIAS INDUSTRY.
Jack London advises authors not to wait for inspiration but to "go after it with a club." Bravo! It is not intended, of course, to lay violent hands on the Happy Idea or to knock it over with a bludgeon. Mr. London realizes that, nine times out of ten, Happy Ideas are drawn toward industry as iron filings toward a magnet. The real secret lies in making a start, even though it promises to get you nowhere, and inspiration will take care of itself.
There's a lot of "fiddle-faddle" wrapped up in that word "inspiration." It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing. If the majority of writers who depend upon fiction for a livelihood were to wait for the spirit of inspiration to move them, the sheriff would happen along and tack a notice on the front door—while the writers were still waiting.