Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/98

THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE very near to being synonymous with the germ idea, the nucleus or starting point of the whole work—but for the fact that an author's starting-point, the initial incident, the intuitive flash or whatever it may be that sets him moving along a particular path, may in some special cases be altogether lost to sight by the time he is ready to write his opening sentence.

Now it makes no difference when or where or how a writer stumbles upon the idea which is to serve as his central purpose. It may spring from his head at a moment's notice like Athena, full armoured—as was the case with the late Frank Norris, who, as has often been told, came one morning to his publisher's office, pale and trembling all over with excitement, and gasping out, almost inarticulately, "I've got a big idea! A great big idea! The biggest idea ever!" It was the outlined scheme for his trilogy of the Epic of the [84]