Chapter XXVI

by Jack London

　　Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid Ialways was an extremist. Early and late I was at it--writing,typing, studying grammar, studying writing and all the forms ofwriting, and studying the writers who succeeded in order to findout how they succeeded. I managed on five hours' sleep in thetwenty-four, and came pretty close to working the nineteen wakinghours left to me. My light burned till two and three in themorning, which led a good neighbour woman into a bit ofsentimental Sherlock-Holmes deduction. Never seeing me in theday-time, she concluded that I was a gambler, and that the lightin my window was placed there by my mother to guide her erring sonhome.

　　The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long, dryspells, when there is never an editor's cheque and everythingpawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty well throughthat winter, and the following summer experienced the longest,dryest spell of all, in the period when salaried men are gone onvacation and manuscripts lie in editorial offices until vacationis over.

　　My difficulty was that I had no one to advise me. I didn't know asoul who had written or who had ever tried to write. I didn'teven know one reporter. Also, to succeed at the writing game, Ifound I had to unlearn about everything the teachers andprofessors of literature of the high school and university hadtaught me. I was very indignant about this at the time; thoughnow I can understand it. They did not know the trick ofsuccessful writing in the years 1895 and 1896. They knew allabout "Snow Bound" and "Sartor Resartus"; but the American editorsof 1899 did not want such truck. They wanted the 1899 truck, andoffered to pay so well for it that the teachers and professors ofliterature would have quit their jobs could they have supplied it.

　　I struggled along, stood off the butcher and the grocer, pawned mywatch and bicycle and my father's mackintosh, and I worked. Ireally did work, and went on short commons of sleep. Critics havecomplained about the swift education one of my characters, MartinEden, achieved. In three years, from a sailor with a commonschool education, I made a successful writer of him. The criticssay this is impossible. Yet I was Martin Eden. At the end ofthree working years, two of which were spent in high school andthe university and one spent at writing, and all three in studyingimmensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in magazinessuch as the "Atlantic Monthly," was correcting proofs of my firstbook (issued by Houghton, Mifflin Co.), was selling sociologicalarticles to "Cosmopolitan" and "McClure's," had declined anassociate editorship proffered me by telegraph from New York City,and was getting ready to marry.

　　Now the foregoing means work, especially the last year of it, whenI was learning my trade as a writer. And in that year, runningshort on sleep and tasking my brain to its limit, I neither dranknor cared to drink. So far as I was concerned, alcohol did notexist. I did suffer from brain-fag on occasion, but alcohol neversuggested itself as an ameliorative. Heavens! Editorialacceptances and cheques were all the amelioratives I needed. Athin envelope from an editor in the morning's mail was morestimulating than half a dozen cocktails. And if a cheque ofdecent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itselfwas a whole drunk.

　　Furthermore, at that time in my life I did not know what acocktail was. I remember, when my first book was published,several Alaskans, who were members of the Bohemian Club,entertained me one evening at the club in San Francisco. We satin most wonderful leather chairs, and drinks were ordered. Neverhad I heard such an ordering of liqueurs and of highballs ofparticular brands of Scotch. I didn't know what a liqueur or ahighball was, and I didn't know that "Scotch" meant whisky. Iknew only poor men's drinks, the drinks of the frontier and ofsailor-town--cheap beer and cheaper whisky that was just calledwhisky and nothing else. I was embarrassed to make a choice, andthe steward nearly collapsed when I ordered claret as an after-dinner drink.