William Wallace Cook

“ Where does the writer get his plot-germs, the raw material which he puts through the mill of his fancy and finally draws forth as a finished and salable product? Life is a thing of infinite variety, and the plot-germ is a thing of Life or it is nothing. Being a mere basic suggestion of the story, the germs must come from the author's experience, or from the experiences of others which have been brought to his attention. Unconsciously the germ lodges in his mind, and his ingenuity, handling other phases of existence, works out the completed plot. ”

“ The sample was of white quartz, the size of a man’s fist, all fuzzy with yellow wires. Virgin metal, forced through the rock crevices in spirals, overlaid the basic stone as with golden filigree-work. Such ore was not known in the Tres Alamos district, nor could veteran prospectors remember that any had been found within a hundred miles. From whence, then, had Jim brought this? The camp dreamed golden dreams, and the crippled outcast of the hills was transformed into an object of universal solicitude.
Patterson wove an ingenious theory about the skull and the leather pouch. ”

“ It was not as severe a sandstorm as others Seward had experienced. People had died in sandstorms, but not in one that had worn itself out so quickly. The señorita must have escaped and have taken the burro with her.
It was now high time for Seward to think of himself. He was perishing for water; and if he could not find Sandy and the canteens he must somehow manage to return to the spring by the hogback. The slight ruffle of air from the north still served him as a guide. Moistening his fingers on his hot tongue, he lifted a hand to catch the direction of the moving air. ”

“ This is advertising, albeit of a very indifferent sort, and advertising is a stepping-stone to success. The fact remains that True Genius does not brand with eccentricity the intelligence through which it expresses itself. The time has passed when long hair and a Windsor tie proclaim a man a favorite of the muses.
Edwards knows a young writer who believes himself a genius and who has, indeed, met with some wonderful successes, but he spoils an otherwise fine character by slovenliness of dress and by straining for a so-called Bohemian effect. ”

“ Chris Davy could not be called a drinking man, but Harding had always known that he would take a glass occasionally. So long as he did not indulge to excess, or in a manner to interfere with his duties, the officials of the division had nothing to say. Just now it was evident that he had enough aboard to make his temper, if not his judgment, a bit unsteady.
Harding backed up against the cupola ladder in the middle of the car and waited for Davy to make the next move. The conductor came on, the fires of wrath kindling in his eyes. ”

“ You know the place, Chombo?”
Chombo’s nostrils dilated. He took pleasure in the thought. He regarded his bow—and the arrow, the silent messenger to carry his hate. “What she do, this La Joya?” he demanded eagerly. “Seward is a fox. Your brother Dirk could not fool him.”
“La Joya is a woman, and a woman can fool him. He will do for a woman in distress what he would not do for a man, Chombo. ”

“ I breathed hard. I love a joke as well as any man, but when a scheming kitchen mechanic makes a poor, innocent Hindoo, ’way off in the desert of Gobi, and a bald-headed theosophist, right there in Hoboken, her victims, it sets my blood to boiling.
I watched Sallie after that, and I caught her, one night, jabbing the potato-masher into a button of wax, sealing a request on Smithers to raise her pay for the thirtieth time. We had a few words and parted, and Sallie is now writing mahatma messages for some one else. ”

“ On the opposite side of the room Miss Clarissa was arguing with Dick. Efforts and arguments alike proving futile to dissuade, conversation fell to sotto voce confidences; and when the Committee of Safety burst from the portable house and through the stockade gate, something had transpired that seemed to imbue both its members with the strength of ten.
“There are twelve of the savages, Dick,” cried Uncle John, “but that confounded book must be recovered at any cost.”
“If the worst comes,” answered Dick, “we will sell our lives as dearly as possible.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ He rested a few moments, tucked the hand of his injured arm into the front of his coat, removed the knotted strips from the runners, took firm hold of the ski stick, and then let himself over the butte's crest.
With skis so close together that they touched, the point of one leading the other by a foot, body not bent, but inclined forward, Peters was off down the steep slope like a bullet out of a gun. ”

“ Why don't you get into something else?”
“I've tried,” said Harding bitterly. “What do you think I've been doing the past year? The reputation I've loaded up with on this road has hounded me, and everybody is afraid to give me a chance. Anyhow, I'd rather be a car tink on this jerkwater division than a captain of industry in a line that has nothing to do with rails and ties. I belong to a family of railroaders, Mr. Trawl, and with me it has got to be the railroad or nothing.” ”

“ And then, abruptly, the horse halted, flung backward with a frightened snort and refused to move farther.
“What’s the matter now, sport?” inquired Seward. “A ditch across the road, or some other kind of a barrier?”
The animal dropped his head and began sniffing as at some object in front of him. Seward slid stiffly from the saddle, the looped reins over his arm, and bent down with one groping hand extended. His fingers twined themselves in long, soft tresses.
“Good Lord,” he gasped, “it’s a woman!” ”

“ The writer who loves his work is not of a sordid nature. The check an editor sends him for his story is the smallest part of his reward. His has been the joy to create, to see a thought take form and amplify under the spell of his inspiration. A joy which is scarcely less is to know that his work has been appreciated by others. ”

“ Peters had slipped and slammed around on the course like a crazy curling stone, finally cutting the feet out from under a fat spectator, who called him Saphead right to his face! Ah, what a wind-up for a sorry afternoon! Peters clenched his hands in his bearskin gloves and crouched down on the rear seat in a fruitless effort to efface himself.
He was nineteen, and Porter Markham was twenty. They both worked for Uncle Silas Goddard, who had a ranch in Montana, and made a business of sending range horses into North Dakota to be halter broken and sold to the settlers. ”

“ But what really aroused apprehension was the fact that Blake, the sheriff, was coming with him, and Blake was leading him by the hand. In the crook of his left arm Seward was carrying a weighted bag.
“What is the matter?” whispered Mrs. Sparling agitatedly. “What do you suppose can be the matter?”
“Nothing matters,” said Ethel calmly, “so long as he is really here. He is bringing your money, Mr. Sparling, and it is plain that he has had to fight to keep it for you. But that is like him. He will fight and fight hard to help—a friend.” ”

“ In his twenty-two years of work in the fiction field Edwards has made certain of this, that there is not a detail in the preparation or recording or forwarding of a manuscript that can be neglected. Competition is keen. Big names, without big ideas back of them, are not so prone to carry weight. It's the stuff, itself, that counts; yet a business-like way of doing things carries a mute appeal to an editor before even a line of the manuscript has been read. It is a powerful appeal, and all on the writer's side. ”

“ The roaring wind drove the sand against the glazed “tarp” and began piling drifts about the girl, Seward, and the burro. It was difficult to breathe, and what air they did take into their lungs was gritty with sand particles and hot as fire. The señorita began to moan and to huddle closer to the burro; the burro snorted and struggled, and Seward reached out a hand to stroke his furry neck and quiet him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER II. WHEN HATE OVERCAME JUDGMENT. TWANG! The six-foot bow bent nearly double with the masterful fifty-pound pull on its leathern string. The arrow, long, slender, and tipped with razor-edged steel cruelly barbed, launched itself straight upward into the eye of the midday sun, the polished head flashing like a streak of fire.
Chombo el Arquero, half-breed horse trader by profession and master bowman in his hours of leisure, lowered the bow and stepped backward to lean against one of the four-by-fours supporting the roof of his hay shed. ”

“ No matter what you are writing, unless you can thrill to every detail of excellence in what you do, unless you can worry about the obscure sentence or the unworthy incident until they are sponged out and recast, it is not too much to say that you will never succeed at the writing game. Love the work for its own sake and it will [Pg 54] bring its inspiration and its reward; look upon it as a grind and melancholy failure stalks in your wake. ”

“ His eyes flamed. “That is Seward’s burro; back there”—he motioned behind him—“is Seward’s sombrero, his coat. But not Seward at all; no, not Seward! I have been fooled!”
“What?” whispered the girl.
“Go and look.”
“No!” Lola Sanger shivered. “Who is it, Chombo, if not Seward of Sacatone?”
Chombo reached out his hand, caught her roughly by the arm, dragged her back along the pass. “You not like to look, eh?” he sneered at her. “You not got much courage now, when all is done? You very fine schemer, señorita, but here your scheme go wrong and you make a fool out of me. There!” ”

“ With never a "best seller" nor a successful play to run up his income, John Milton has, in a score and two years of work, wrested more than $100,000 from the tills of the publishers. Short stories, novelettes, serials, books, a few moving picture scenarios and a little verse have all contributed to the sum total. Industry was rowelled by necessity, and when a short story must fill the flour barrel, a poem buy a pair of shoes or a serial take up a note at the bank, the muse is provided with an atmosphere at which genius balks. ”

“ Forty-mile! Seward had a clew.
“From Forty-mile to Sunrise Cañon, señorita,” he suggested, “is a long ride for a woman; all of sixty miles.”
“Not for a woman who knows the deserts, señor! I am at home in the deserts.”
“You live at Forty-mile?”
“I lived with Tio Enrico,” she explained; “you must have heard of him—Enrico Silva, of the Posada del Rey Niño. Now I shall have to live there with a cousin. It is one’s fate,” she said with a sigh, “when one has no padre, no madre. ”

“ There are natures so worldly, perhaps even among writers, as to scoff at the idea of spiritual success. They are overshadowed by the Material, and when the Spiritual, which is the true source of their power, is no longer the "still, small voice" of their inspiration, they will be bankrupt materially as well.
A writer cannot hide himself in his work. His individuality is written into it, and he may be read between the lines for what he is. A creation reflects the creator, and that the work may be good the writer should have spiritual ideals and do his utmost to live up to them. ”