If a mahogany table was to be made to shine, it was elbow-grease that the operation needed.

Forethought is the elbow-grease which a novelist,--or poet, or dramatist,--requires.

It is not only his plot that has to be turned and re-turned in his mind, not his plot chiefly, but he has to make himself sure of his situations, of his characters, of his effects, so that when the time comes for hitting the nail he may know where to hit it on the head,--so that he may himself understand the passion, the calmness, the virtues, the vices, the rewards and punishments which he means to explain to others,--so that his proportions shall be correct, and he be saved from the absurdity of devoting two-thirds of his book to the beginning, or two-thirds to the completion of his task.

It is from want of this special labour, more frequently than from intellectual deficiency, that the tellers of stories fail so often to hit their nails on the head.

To think of a story is much harder work than to write it.
The author can sit down with the pen in his hand for a given time, and produce a certain number of words.