This doctrine, I am afraid, is at present carried much too far; for why should writing differ so much from other arts? The nimbleness of a dancing-master is not at all prejudiced by being taught to move; nor doth any mechanic, I believe, excercise his tools the worse by having learnt to use them.--_Fielding_, "Tom Jones."
[H] "There and Back" went through the Fiction Factory in twelve days.
[I] This story sold through Kellogg Newspaper Company, Chicago. The two short stories sold to the late lamented _Wayside Tales_, Detroit, Mich.
Is the nickel novel easy to write? The writer who has never attempted one is quite apt to think that it is. There are hundreds of writers, the Would-be-Goods, making less than a thousand a year, who would throw up their hands in horror at the very thought of debasing their art by contriving at "sensational" five-cent fiction. So far from "debasing their art," as a matter of fact they could not lift it to the _high plane_ of the nickel novel if they tried. Of these Would-be-Goods more anon--to use an expression of the ante-bellum romancers. Suffice to state, in this place, writers of recognized standing, and even ministers, have written--and some now are writing--these quick-moving stories. There's a knack about it, and the knack is not easy to acquire. No less a person than Mr. Richard Duffy, formerly editor of _Ainslee's_ and later of the _Cavalier_, a man of rare gifts as a writer, once told Edwards that the nickel novel was beyond his powers.
So far as Edwards is concerned, he gave the best that was in him to the half-dime "dreadfuls," and he made nothing dreadful of them after all. He has written hundreds, and there is not a line in any one of them which he would not gladly have his own son read. In fact, his ethical standard, to which every story must measure up, was expressed in this mental question as he worked: "If I had a boy would I willingly put this before him?" If the answer was No, the incident, the paragraph, the sentence or the word was eliminated. In 1910 Edwards wrote his last nickel novel, turning his back deliberately on three thousand dollars a year (they were paying him $60 each for them then), not because they were "debasing his art" but because he could make more money at other writing--for when one is forty-four he must get on as fast as he can.