She writes entirely upon the typewriter. Even the first draft is composed on a machine. Frequently she spends the entire day at her machine. In writing _The Sick-a-Bed Lady_ she devoted twelve hours each day for nine days to the task and this, with one exception, is the quickest story-making she has ever accomplished. It is, by any standard, a tremendous bit of work. Three, four, rarely six hours a day is the ordinary day’s work of a busy writer. Twelve hours on a stretch can be and is managed once in a great while when circumstances make the work imperative; but it is not managed for more than a day or two and is usually followed by a complete rest, sometimes in bed and with medical attendance! Twelve hours a day for nine days--it will make the hardiest shudder. Many of the best American writers are entirely satisfied if they do 500 or 1,000 words a day--and not every day at that. But as a rule Miss Abbott takes from a month to a year to write in such time as she can dedicate to it a short story, or a long short story, or a short novel. In eight years she wrote some twenty stories. For two years in succession she won a $1,000 prize in _Collier’s Weekly_ short story contests with _The Very Tired Girl_ and _The Sick-a-Bed Lady_.
Before her marriage to Dr. Fordyce Coburn Miss Abbott was secretary and English assistant in the State Normal School at Lowell, Massachusetts. This job kept her at her desk all day and it was in hours when she might have been expected to be asleep or resting or playing that she hunted titles and let her fancy do what it would with them. She used a pen name at first. Her first serious attempts at writing were in verse. Two long poems published in _Harper’s Magazine_ attracted much attention.
How curiously things go in this world! Miss Abbott had furnished the text and scheme for an advertising circular sent out by a Boston firm. The circular was so strikingly good that business houses began to come to its originator with offers of advertising contracts. Miss Abbott was for some time in a state of indecision as to whether she should develop her gift for writing advertisements or try to succeed with stories. Finally she sent two tales to two magazines with the mental resolution: