How I write my novels

Excerpt

To sit down in cold blood and deliberately set to cudgel one’s brains with a view to dragging from them a plot wherewith to make a book is (I have been told) the habit of some writers, and those of no small reputation.  Happy people!  What powers of concentration must be theirs!  What a belief in themselves—­that most desirable of all beliefs, that sweet propeller toward the temple of fame.  Have faith in yourself, and all me, will have faith in you.