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Rapidly, perhaps, but not finally. Nearly every bit of Virginia and Life and Gabriella was rewritten at least three times, some parts more; and one chapter was rewritten thirteen times. It sounds incredible, but Miss Glasgow says so herself. She used to write with a pen, but now does her first draft in pencil and revises after it has been typewritten.

And always novels. “I cannot write short stories,” Miss Glasgow explains. “They bore me excruciatingly. The whole technique of the short story and the novel is different. All the best of the short stories must be painfully condensed with slight regard for the evolutionary causes bringing about this or that effect. Everything that I see, I see in the form of a novel—as a large canvas. I want to trace the process of cause and effect; and that is why both Virginia and Gabriella were a joy in the writing. Those books do not deal with problems. I do not ever let a problem get into my novels—there is none, except, of course, as some problem of an individual life may present itself to the character. I am not concerned with any propaganda. A book should never serve any purpose but the telling of life as it is—being faithfully realistic.”