"It's been mighty funny, this success and all," said Dick. "Just before
the novel appeared I'd been trying, without success, to sell some short
stories. Then, after my book came out, I polished up three and had them
accepted by one of the magazines that had rejected them before. I've
done a lot of them since; publishers don't pay me for my book till
this winter."
"Don't let the victor belong to the spoils."
"You mean write trash?" He considered. "If you mean deliberately
injecting a slushy fade-out into each one, I'm not. But I don't suppose
I'm being so careful. I'm certainly writing faster and I don't seem to
be thinking as much as I used to. Perhaps it's because I don't get any
conversation, now that you're married and Maury's gone to Philadelphia.
Haven't the old urge and ambition. Early success and all that."
"Doesn't it worry you?"
"Frantically. I get a thing I call sentence-fever that must be like
buck-fever--it's a sort of intense literary self-consciousness that
comes when I try to force myself. But the really awful days aren't when
I think I can't write. They're when I wonder whether any writing is
worth while at all--I mean whether I'm not a sort of glorified buffoon.
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