Provided, John Milton qualified, my fountain of inspiration will flow as freely when there is nothing to hinder it as it does now when I have it turned off for twelve hours out of the twenty-four. Edwards maintained stoutly, that if you can make $125 a month running the mill nights and Sundays, you ought to be able to make a good deal more than that with all the week days added. Query: Will the mill grind out as good a grist if it grinds continuously? If I were sure. When I'm paymastering the hardest I seem to be almost swamped with ideas for the story mill. There's lightning in a change of work, the sort of lightning that clears the air with a tonic of inspiration. There's no hard and fast rule, that I am aware, for capturing a Happy Idea at just the moment it may be most in demand. What if the Happy Idea does not come when I am ready for it? Happy Ideas, you know, have a disagreeable habit of hiding out.

But getting squared away with a fresh sheet over the platen isn't the whole of it. Suppose I have the whole day before me and sit down at my typewriter to write a story. We're dealing with a psychological mystery that has never been broken to harness. I don't know, my dear, whether it's logical or not. It may be, ventured John Milton, that I could do better work, snatching a few precious moments from those everlasting pay-rolls, than by giving all my time and attention to my private Factory. If you can be so successful when you are obliged to work nights and Sundays-and most of the time with your wits befogged by office routine-what could you not do if you spent ALL your time in your Fiction Factory? You've been thinking it over for two years, John, and this month is the first time your returns from your writing have ever been more than your salary at the office. Hadn't we better think it over? he quibbled. Her conviction, orally expressed, had all the ring of true metal yet her husband, reflecting his own inner perplexities, heard a false note suggesting the base alloy of uncertainty. John Milton wanted her to say that, and yet he did not. To write, was the answer, promptly and boldly, to do nothing else but write. Well, my dear, said John Milton Edwards, miserably uncertain and turning to appeal to his wife, which shall it be-to write or not to write? Published by Good Press, 4057664606945 Table of Contents Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

Storymill free