It was true the serial was twenty- one thousand words, and they offered to pay him sixteen dollars on publication, which was something like seventy-five cents a thousand words; but it was equally true that it was the second thing he had attempted to write and that he was himself thoroughly aware of its clumsy worthlessness.
But even his earliest efforts were not marked with the clumsiness of mediocrity.

What characterized them was the clumsiness of too great strength--the clumsiness which the tyro betrays when he crushes butterflies with battering rams and hammers out vignettes with a war-club.

So it was that Martin was glad to sell his early efforts for songs.

He knew them for what they were, and it had not taken him long to acquire this knowledge.

What he pinned his faith to was his later work.
He had striven to be something more than a mere writer of magazine fiction.