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

Nowadays penwork is confined largely to signing letters and other documents and indorsing checks; to use it for anything else should be named a misdemeanor in the statutes with a sliding scale of punishments to fit the gravity of the offense.

It is not to be inferred, of course, that a man will dictate his love letters to a stenographer. Here, indeed, "two's company and three's a crowd." Every man should master the T. W., and when he confides his tender sentiments to paper for the eyes of the One Girl, his own fingers should manipulate the keys and the T. W., should be equipped with a tri-chrome ribbon—red and black record and purple copying. Black will answer for the more subdued expressions, red should be switched on for the warmer terms of endearment, and purple should be used for whatever might be construed as evidence in a court of law. Even billets-doux have been known to develop a commercial value.

When a serviceable typewriter may be bought for $25 what excuse has anyone for side-stepping the inventive ingenuity of the day which makes for clearness and speed? How much does Progress owe the typewriter? Who can measure the debt? How much does civilization owe the telephone, the night-letter, the fast mail and two-cent postage? Even more than to these does Progress owe to that mechanism of springs, keys and type-bars which makes plain and rapid the written thought.

In the Edwards Fiction Factory the T. W., comprises the entire "plant." The "hands" employed for the skilled labor are his own, and fairly proficient. His own, too, is the administrative ability, modest enough in all truth yet able to guide the Factory's destiny with a fair meed of success.

Since the T. W., is so important, Edwards believes in always keeping abreast of improvements. The best is none too good. A typed script, no less than a stereotyped idea, is damned by mediocrity. If a typewriter appears this year which is a distinct advance over last year's machine, Edwards has it. Keeping up-to-date is usually a little expensive, but it pays.

In the early days of his writing Edwards used the old Caligraph. It was a small machine and confined itself to capital letters. Whenever he wished to indicate the proper place for a capital he did it thus: HIS NAME WAS CAESAR, AND HE LIVED IN ROME. If he lost a letter—and letters in those days were not easily replaced—he allowed the unknown quantity "X" to piece out: HIX NAME WAX CAEXAR—. In due time he came to realize the importance of neatness and traded his first Caligraph for a later model equipped with letters from both "cases." During twenty-two years he has purchased at least twenty-five typewriters, each the last word in typewriter construction at the time it was bought. At present he has two machines, one a "shift-key" and the other with every letter and character separately represented on the key-board.

There are many makes of typewriters, and operators are of many minds regarding the "best" makes. Edwards has favored the full key-board as being less of a drain upon the attention than the "shift-key" machine. For the writer who composes upon his machine the operating must become a habit, otherwise an elusive idea may take wings for good while the one who evolved it is searching out the letters necessary to nail it hard and fast to the white sheet. Edwards has recently discovered that he can change from his full key-board to a shift-key and back again without materially interrupting his flow of ideas.

The characters of the key-board used for ordinary business purposes and those in demand by the writer are somewhat different. Not always, on the key-board designed for commercial use, will the exclamation point be found. This, if wanted, must be built up out of a period and a half-ditto mark,—"." plus "'" equals "!" Such makeshifts should be tabooed by the careful writer. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and once. Three motions, two at the key-board and one at the back-spacer, are two too many. By all means have the real thing in exclamation points—!

Another makeshift with which Edwards has little patience is the custom of using ditto marks for quotation marks, and semi-dittos for semi-quotes. These, and other characters, may be added to most machines by eliminating the fractions, the oblique mark or the per cent. sign.