The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1924-05-25
FATE Is TRICKY
WITH AUTHORS
Honore Willsie Struggled
Through All Her
Successes

IN her long struggle upward from
eager student to established author,
Honore Willsie, now Mrs. William Nor
row, was spared none Of the labor or
disappointment with which fate tests
the sincerity of those who attain sue
cess in the arts. And yet in two in
stances success came to her almost
overnight, says Boston Transcript.
Honore McCue was born in Ottumwa,
Ia, of New England ancestry. She
received the degree Of B. A. from the
University Of Wisconsin, where she be-
gan training for authorship. She took
only the required courses in English.
however, and majored in history, be-
lieving that, in order to write, she must
, have fund of information of which
she considered history the most import
ant element.
Out To Conquer New York
Leaving college she set out, of course,
to conquer New York with the weapon
that inexperience usually carries-a
short story which ran into, five thousand
words. Reflections followed fast on
submissions, until one day the Mcclure
publishing house sent for her. There,
instead. of flattering acceptance, she
was received by s. s. Mcclure with the
assertion that she knew nothing of plot
making and had no technique. She had,
however, he informed her, tthe gift of
gab," Which might some day be turned
to account If she were willing to learn,
especially how to boil down her STYLE
Returning home she boiled down the
five thousand words to the stipulated
brevity. Mr.. Mcclure accepted the
story-which had taken three weeks
to rewrite-paying $40 for it and or
dering one a week, which the rising
young writer supplied, for the same
price for each story, during the follow
ing year.
She then went to Arizona, where she
spent two years among the Mohave and
Hualapai Indians, and did not like it.
But one night, unusually lonely and
miserable, Mrs. Willsie, mounting her
pony, rode away to the west, right
into the sunset, she related the other
day, and then, all at once, in the glow
and color that filled heaven and earth,
she knew that there was before her
great beauty. And into her first novel
she Incorporated this beauty, along with
knowledge cleaned from the desert about
life and people.
A Publishers Error
The novel, 1.-THE Heart of the Des-
ert," went first to d. Appleton and
company, as that name headed the al
phabetical list of publishers. 1t was
returned, and the author forgot about
the story until some years later, when
the editor of Adventure asked if she
knew anyone who had a good story.
Recalling this one, she started to out
line the plot; whereupon he finished it
for her, winding up with the astound-
ing declaration that he had been with
the Appletons when her story was sub
mitted, that it had been accepted, but,
through error, was returned; they they
had no record of her address, and had
been securing New York for it ever
since !, He paid her 5000 for the story.
In the meantime Mrs. Willsie had
become interested in the Indians so
much that when she finally returned
to New York she found she had lout-
grown easily written, easily sold sto-
ries. While she worked on Indian
stories she learned the way to pawn
shops and knew what hunger was until
one day one of the staff of EverybOdy's
telephoned her that there was zone man
in America who might be fool enough
to use that stuff" The man was Theo1
dore Dresser, then editor-in-chief of the
Butterick publications. He liked the
stories and told her that il five years
she might be able to command hum
dreds Of dollars for one such story, but,
he frankly confessed, he would trade
on her poverty and her lack of fame
So he paid only $50 for an Indian
story, Sand later accepted others.
There then followed another of those
periods with which authors are fear
fully familiar, but in which the unini-
fa+a -. Ill vh,r.t ..I,o
could find no market for anything she
wrote. There came a day, however,
when another editor, fascinated by the
tales she was telling Of her life in Ari-I
IONA, ordered a 30,000-word serial to
be written exactly as she talked.
The Second Novel
Golfers Weekly later requested Mrs.
Willsie to prepare a series of political
articles for them. Then she spent a
year in study before writing a series