I tell you, Edwards, there's nothing funny in the game that I can see--not for the so-called literary worker. The gods may laugh when they see a man with that brand of insanity on him that actually forces him to write. But I doubt if the writer laughs--not even if he writes a 'best seller.' For success entails turning out other successes, and that is hard work. Excuse me! I am going back to the farm. I will write only when I have to, and only as long as my farm will not support me. I've got hold of a pretty good place cheap, down here with the outlook of making a good living on it in time. No more the Great White Way, with the Dirty Black Alley behind it, in mine! I am not going to carry my hat in my hand around to editors' offices and take up collections for long. Besides, most of the editors blooming now are just out of college and are not dry behind the ears yet. They think that Johnny Go-bang, who edited the sporting page in the Podunk University Screamer, knows more about writing fiction than the old fellows who have been at it a couple of decades. And I reckon they are right. They are looking for 'fresh' material; some of it is pretty 'raw' as well as fresh. I fooled an editor the other day by sending a manuscript on strange paper, written on a new typewriter, and with an assumed name attached. Sold the story and got a long letter of encouragement from the editor. Great game--encouraging 'new' writers! About on a par with the scheme some rum sellers have of washing their sidewalks with the dregs of beer kegs. The spider and fly game. Now, if I told that editor what an ass he had made of himself, would he ever buy another manuscript of me again? I fear not!
Perhaps I am pessimistic, Brother Edwards. There's no real fun in the writing game--not for the writer, at least. Not when he is forty years old and knows that already he is a 'has-been.' Good luck to you. Hope your book is a success, and if I really knew just what you wanted I'd try to whip something into shape for you. For you very well know that, if other fiction writers give you incidents for your book, they'll mostly be fiction! That is the devil of it. If a fiction writer cuts a sliver off his thumb while paring the corned beef for dinner, he will make out of the story a gory combat between his hero and a horde of enemies, and give details of the carnage fit to make his own soul shudder.