ot of that novel I
told you about!" but Marsh, intent on something else, had answered
vaguely, "Oh, yes!" and had changed the conversation, leaving Henry to
imagine that he had little faith in his power to write. He had been so
despondent after that, that he had gone back to College and, having
re-read what he had written, had torn the manuscript in pieces and
thrown it into the grate because it seemed so dull and tasteless. He had
not written a word after that for more than a month, and he might not
have written anything for a longer period had he not heard from Gilbert
Farlow that he had finished a comedy in three acts and had sent it to
Mr. Alexander. The news stimulated him, and in a little while he was
itching to write again. In the evening, he began to re-write the story
and thereafter it went on, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, until it
was finished. His feelings about it changed with remarkable rapidity. He
read it over, in its unfinished state, many times, feeling at one time
it was excellent, and at another time that it was poor, flatulent stuff,
without colour or vivacity.

Writing did not give pleasure to him: it gave him pain. He felt none of
that exultation in creating characters which he had been told was part
of the pleasures of an author. There were times, indeed, when he felt a
mitigated joy in writing because his ideas were fluent and words fell
easily off his pen, but even on those occasions, the labour of writing
hurt him and exhausted him. The times of pleasurable writing were short
interludes between the long stretches of painful writing, little oases
that made the journey across the desert just possible. And then there
were those periods of appalling misery when, having ended a chapter, he
wondered what he should make his people do next. He would leave them,
landed neatly at the end of some adventure or emotional crisis, feeling
that the story was going on splendidly and that his power to write was
full and strong, and then, having written the number of the next
chapter, he would reach forward to write the first word ... and suddenly
there was devastation in his mind, and "My God! I don't know what to
make them do now!" he would say.

He had read in a literary journal that some authors planned their
stories before they began to write them. They prepared a summary of the
tale, and then enlarged the summary. They knew exactly what was to
happen in each chapter. A character could not move or r