Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/26

 They had one immediate effect. They made him self-conscious. He began to wonder how he had written this play and the stories which had come before, stories which publishers, in the light of his present renown, had dragged out of old files with prayers for permission to reissue them in book form. He began to wonder if he could write anything new. Determining to test himself one morning, a few weeks after the opening of his play, he seated himself before his typewriter. He selected a theme quite easily from the ragbag of his memory, but he had no sooner decided on his first sentence than anxiety beset him. How was he going to tell his story? What form was it going to take? What point of view should he choose? This consciousness of processes, so recently acquired, produced in him so great a terror, so complete a realization that he knew nothing sufficiently recondite about these matters, that he found himself unable to tell his story at all. After a few such futile attempts to recapture his natural routine he was ready to admit defeat. Discouraged and disheartened, he faced the prospect of an involuntary sterility.

Meanwhile his fame increased. Callers, in the guise of worshipping admirers, grew more frequent, despite his alarming silences in their presence. The