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Hokitika Guardian, 28 December 1928, Page 5

THE FORMULA FOR A NOVEL. “My formula for a book is simplicity itself—an outdoor setting of land in which I have lived until, as Mary Austin expresses it, I know ‘the procession of the year.’ Then I people the location with the men and women who live there, and 'on my pages write down their story of joy and sorrow commingled as living among them I know it to be. This is the secret of any appeal that my work may make. Ancl I want to say for such people as I put into books, that in the plain, old-fashioned country homes where I have lived, I have known such wealth of loving consideration, such fidelity between husband and wife, such obedience in children, such constancy to purpose, such whole-souled love for (friends ancl neighbours, such absence of jealousy, pettiness and rivalry, as my city.critics do not know is in existence. I never could write a historical novel, because I want my history embellished with anything on earth save fiction. I never could write of society, because I know, just enough about it to know that the more I know, the less I wish to know. I have read a few ‘problem* novels, and they appeal to me as a wandering over nasty, lawless subjects and situations of the most ancient type, under new names. There is nothing remaining for me but the woods, and the people I meet there. For every bad man and woman I ever have known I have met, lived with and intimately known an overwhelming number of strictly clean, decent people, and upon the lives of these T base what 1 write.”—Gene Stratton Porter.