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We are therefore ready, before going further, to formulate certain paradoxical principles governing all literary work.

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To understand why authors go wrong we must first understand how authors may go right. The paradoxical rules which if observed will hold the author to the path of virtue and rectitude may be formulated briefly as follows:

1. An author must write to make money first of all, and every other purpose must be secondary to this purpose of money making.

The paradoxy inherent in this principle is that while writing the author must never for a single moment think of the money he may make.

2. Every writer must have a stern and insistent moral purpose in his writing, and especially must he be animated by this purpose if he is writing fiction.

The paradoxy here is that never, under any circumstances, may the writer exhibit his moral purpose in his work.

3. A writer must not write too much nor must he write too little. He is writing too much if his successive books sell better and better; he is writing too little if each book shows declining sales.