ad given myself up, as it were. I was the most modest of
children, and fully decided within myself that a man so clever, as a
real live editor must needs be, could not have been mistaken. He had
seen and judged, and practically told me that writing was not my forte.
Yet the inevitable hour came round once more. Once again an idea caught
me, held me, _persuaded_ me that I could put it into words. I struggled
with it this time, but it was too strong for me, that early
exhilarating certainty that there was "something in me," as people say,
was once more mine, and seizing my pen, I sat down and wrote, wrote,
wrote, until the idea was an object formed. With closed doors I wrote
at stolen moments. I had not forgotten the quips and cranks uttered at
my expense by my brother and sister on the refusal of that last-first
manuscript. To them it had been a fund of joy.

In fear and trembling I wrote this second effusion, finished it, wept
over it (it was the most lachrymose of tales), and finally under cover
of night induced the house maid to carry it to the post. To that first
unsympathetic editor I sent it (which argues a distinct lack of malice
in my disposition), and oh, joy! it was actually accepted. I have
written many a thing since, but I doubt if I have ever known again the
unadulterated delight that was mine when my first insignificant check
was held within my hands.

=====================================================================

[Transcriber's note: Mrs. Hungerford (Margaret Wolfe Hamilton)
(1855?-1897) "How a novel is written" (from The Ladies' Home
Journal vol. VII No 2 Philadelphia January 1890 p.11)]

The Duchess

"How a novel is written"

The characters in my novels, you ask how I conceive them? Once the plot
is rescued from the misty depths of the mind, the characters come and
range themselves readily enough. A scene, we will say, suggests
itself--a garden, a flower show, a ball-room, what you will--and two
people in it. A _young_ man and woman for choice. They are _always_
young with me, for that matter, for what, under the heaven we are
promised, is so altogether perfect as youth! If any one of you, dear
readers, is as bad a sleeper as I am, you will understand how thoughts
swarm at midnight. Busy, bustling, stinging bees, they forbid the
needed rest, and, thronging the idle brain, compel attention. Here in
the silent hours the ghosts called characters walk, smiling, bowing,
noddin