“A plan, and always keeping your eye on what you want to be doing in three years or in five years--that is what makes for success for a writer.
“I came to New York with the intention of being a writer. I did not want to work on a magazine or a newspaper. And I wanted to write what I wanted to write.
“I had sold Bob Davis [Robert H. Davis, editor of _Munsey’s Magazine_] a little love story called _Beatrice and the Rose_. So after a few weeks in New York I went to see him with a bundle of stories I wanted him to buy. He looked them over and shook his head.
“‘Do me something else like _Beatrice and the Rose_ and I’ll take it,’ he said.
“‘I don’t want to go on writing stuff like that,’ I explained. ‘If that’s the best I can do I’ll give up writing altogether.’
“‘But nobody wants to read about those deserts and glowing sunsets. There is only one man in New York who will read about deserts--Theodore Dreiser.’
“‘All right,’ I decided. ‘I will go to see Theodore Dreiser.’
“I sent my stuff to Mr. Dreiser in advance and next day I went down to see what he thought of it. I was pretty well scared. I walked around the Butterick Building--four times I walked around that bulky flatiron before I screwed up enough courage to go in. When I finally got inside and was ushered into Mr. Dreiser’s office [the novelist was then editor of the _Delineator_, a job Mrs. Willsie now holds] I was tongue-tied with nervousness. That nervousness might well have been prophetic. The interview turned out to be a momentous one for me.
“‘My God!’ said Mr. Dreiser, looking me over. ‘Another infant come to New York to reform it.’ But after a little talk he offered me a job, editorial work at a good salary.
“‘I’ll have to think that over,’ I said, the temptation of a good regular salary struggling against my plans for writing, and writing only.
“‘No,’ Mr. Dreiser ordered. ‘You sit right there and decide now.’
“So I sat there and thought about it and finally I told him that I wouldn’t take his job. I had stuck out this far and I guessed I could go on.
“‘All right,’ Mr. Dreiser agreed without argument. ‘Stick it out at the writing game if you want to. It won’t be easy, but you will make good. You will have a hard time at first, and you will need pluck. But in five years you will land and land big. As for these stories of yours, I will buy them.’ And he named a sum staggering to my inexperience, though he assured me he was taking advantage of me because I was unknown.