Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/180

THE GOSPEL OF INFINITE PAINS

stroke of his pen, he bravely annihilated the result of four or five nights of labour. He was heroic at such times.

Balzac, of course, was one of the colossals, and all of his methods, whether right or wrong, were colossal like himself. The vast majority of us will never write a Comédie Humaine nor overspread our proof sheets with mad pyrotechnics of erasures. Nevertheless, the essence of Balzac's method is a sound one. You can follow no better plan, provided your mind works that way, than to get your whole initial thought down on paper in the first heat of creation; and then, after a day or two, re-write and amplify, and re-write and amplify again, building up, little by little, filling in the details, smoothing the rough places until your work finally reaches a stage that you are content to keep as its permanent form. Yet even then, if you are a convert to the Gospel of Infinite [166]