Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1908-08-12
STRUGGLES OF AN AUTHOR.
Has a Book on the Stocks Now-Sees
Success Ahead.


Success Ahead.
Yes said the struggling young
author to New York Sun man, 81
am still on the job, still plugging
away, and not a bit discouraged,
though the stuff has been, until late
ly, mostly coming back just the same.
Speaking Of the stuff coming back
reminds one of the publishers print
ed forms of declination; polite al
ways, but they are all just the same
now as they were when I first began,
and really l wonder a little at that
The publishers are all the time call
ing for new and original things on
the part of the authors. Why dom
they themselves display some origi-
nality, invent occasionally a new form
of declination?
Wouldn't this be a sort of spur or
incentive to the authors as showing
that the publishers practised what
they preached, and that sort of
thing? But I don't know Perhaps
if they did get up new forms now and
then I should feel for a time, when
first saw them, as if l were dealing
with strangers, whereas now when I
see the old familiar forms I seem to
be dealing with friends, and perhaps
it is better as it is.
'But after all, this is really a tri-
fling matter, the question of real i'm
pOrtance being, Is my work improv-
ing? 1 think it is.
GAS I look over, as I sometimes do,
the stuff that I submitted only few
short years ago I think now that the
publishers were justified in sending
it back For while it had ideas in it,
still it wasn't finished. It had blind
places in it, where the reader might
get lost-places where the writer had
himself not surveyed and laid out the
road clear and open fields of surplus
age.
Not that all surplusage is super
fiuous-far from it! How many
stories do we read that depend for
their charm solely upon the manner
of their telling, stories which,
stripped to the bare facts contained
in them would not be worth telling
at all! If we should take the perfume
from the rose and then it's color it
would be but a cabbage in miniature,
not worth the plucking. So of many
a story, which gives us delight not
because of it's substance but because
of it's dress and trimmings, of the
manner in which it is told and from
which not so much as a spangle
could be removed without injury to
the whole.
But glitter as these spangTes may IN
our own minds, not all of us are able
to evolve them in perfect form and
then to place them just where they
belong, and looking over that old
stuff l find that mine were not always
perfectly wrought and that they were
scattered rather promiscuously, and
think now that they were kind to me
who checked my flight and so gave
me these years of further practise.
(Which trust I have not wasted. I
have even sold a few little things re-
Gently, and now l cOnfde to you that
[ have a book on the stocks which [
confidently expect will be found in
due time well up among the six best
sellers; this to depend solely, in my
opinion, upon just one thing.
Lately, 1 bought book in which
I expected to find great enjoyment.
When that book came and l first
hefted it l thought it must be bound,
not in muslin, but in double thickness
sheet iron covers, it was so heavy;
though not a big book it weighed I
thought about four pounds, which
weight, however, l found presently
to be not in iron covers, but in the
paper on which the book was printed.
II lighted my pipe and tackled
this book at 1880 after dinner and it
opened UP delightfully."-, bat at 8
o'clock my pipe was out and I had
lost my place, my mind was quite
distracted and only my muscles at at
tention with holding that book; my
arms ached and my back and legs; l
-I,o,-15 Iovo sold now that that hOOly