I have often been asked how I came to write.
The best answer is that I
needed the money. When I started I was 35
and had failed in every enterprise
I had ever attempted.
I was born in Chicago. After epidemics had
closed two schools that I attended,
my parents shipped me to a cattle ranch in
Idaho where I rode for my brothers
who were only recently out of college and
had entered the cattle business
as the best way of utilizing their Yale degrees.
Later, I was dropped from
Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts;
flunked examinations for West
Point; and was discharged from the regular
army on account of a weak heart.
Next, my brother Henry backed me in setting
up a stationery store in Pocatello,
Idaho. That didn't last long either.
When I got married in 1900 I was making
$15 a week in my father's storage
battery business.
In 1903 my oldest brother, George, gave
me a position on a gold dredge
he was operating in the Stanley Basin country
in Idaho. Our next stop was
in Oregon, where my brother Henry was managing
a gold dredge on the Snake
River. We arrived on a freight wagon, with
a collie dog and $40. Forty
dollars did not seem like much to get anywhere
with, so I decided to enter
a poker game at a local saloon and run my
capital up to several hundred
dollars during the night. When I returned
at midnight to the room we had
rented, we still had the collie dog. Otherwise,
we were not broke.
I worked in Oregon until the company failed, and then my brother got me
a job as a railroad policeman in Salt Lake City. We were certainly poverty-stricken
there, but pride kept us from asking for help. Neither of us knew much
about anything that was practical, but we had to do everything ourselves,
including the family wash. Not wishing to see Mrs. Burroughs do work of
that sort, I volunteered to do it myself. During those months, I half soled
my own shoes and did numerous odd jobs.
Then a brilliant idea overtook us. We had
our household furniture with us, and we held
an auction which was a howling success. People
paid real money for the junk and we went
back to Chicago first class. The next few
months encompassed a series of horrible jobs.
I sold electric light bulbs to janitors,
candy to drug stores, and Stoddard's Lectures
from door to door. I had decided I was a
total failure, when I saw an advertisement
which indicated that somebody wanted an expert
accountant. Not knowing anything about its
I applied for the job and got it.
I am convinced that what are commonly known
as "the breaks," good or bad, have
fully as much to do with one's success or
failure as ability. The break I got in this
instance lay in the fact that my employer
knew even less about the duties of an expert
accountant than I did.
Next I determined there was a great future
in the mail-order business, and I landed
a job that brought me to the head of a large
department. About this time our daughter
Joan was born.
Having a good job and every prospect for
advancement, I decided to go
into business for myself, with harrowing
results. I had no capital when
I started and less when I got through. At
this time the mail-order company
offered me an excellent position if I wanted
to come back. If I had accepted
it, I would probably have been fixed for
life with a good living salary.
Yet the chances are that I would never have
written a story, which proves
that occasionally it is better to do the
wrong thing than the right.
When my independent business sank without a trace, I approached as near
financial nadir as one may reach. My son, Hulbert, had just been born.
I had no job, and no money. I had to pawn Mrs, Burroughs' jewelry and my
watch in order to buy food. I loathed poverty, and I should have liked
to have put my hands on the man who said that poverty is an honorable estate.
It is an indication of inefficiency and nothing more. There is nothing
honorable or fine about it. To be poor is quite bad enough. But to be poor
without hope . . . well, the only way to understand it is to be it.
I got writer's cramp answering blind ads,
and wore out my shoes chasing
after others. At last l got placed as an
agent for a lead pencil sharpener.
I borrowed office space, and while subagents
were out, trying unsuccessfully
to sell the sharpener, I started to write
my first story.
I had good reason for thinking I could sell
what I wrote. I had gone thoroughly
through some of the all-fiction magazines
and I made up my mind that if
people were paid for writing such rot as
I read I could write stories just
as rotten. Although I had never written a
story, I knew absolutely that
I could write stories just as entertaining
and probably a lot more so than
any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story
writing, and now, after eighteen
years of writing, I still know nothing about
the technique, although with
the publication of my new novel, "Tarzan
and the Lost Empire",
there are 31 books on my list. I had never
met an editor, or an author
or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit
a story or what I could
expect in payment. Had I known anything about
it at all I would never have
thought of submitting half a novel; but that
is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor
of The All-Story magazine, published
by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first
half of a story I had sent
him, and if the second half was as good he
thought he might use it. Had
he not given me this encouragement, I would
never have finished the story,
and my writing career would have been at
an end, since l was not writing
because of any urge to write, nor for any
particular love of writing. l
was writing because I had a wife and two
babies, a combination which does
not work well without money.
I finished the second half of the story,
and got $400 for the manuscript,
which at that time included all serial rights.
The check was the first
big event in my life. No amount of money
today could possibly give me the
thrill that first $400 check gave me.
My first story was entitled, "Dejah
Thoris, Princess of Mars."
Metcalf changed it to "Under the Moons
of Mars." It was later
published in book form as "A Princess
of Mars."
With the success of my first story, l decided
to make writing a career,
though I was canny enough not to give up
my job. But the job did not pay
expenses and we had a recurrence of great
poverty, sustained only by the
thread of hope that I might make a living
writing fiction. I cast about
for a better job and landed one as a department
manager for a business
magazine. While I was working there, I wrote
"Tarzan of the Apes",
evenings and holidays. I wrote it in longhand
on the backs of old letterheads
and odd pieces of paper. I did not think
it was a very good story and I
doubted if it would sell. But Bob Davis saw
its possibilities for magazine
publication and I got a check . . . this
time, l think, for $700.
I then wrote "The Gods of Mars",
which I sold immediately to
the Munsey Company for All-Story. "The
Return of Tarzan", which
I wrote in December, 1912, and January, 1913,
was rejected by Metcalf and
purchased by Street & Smith for $1,000
in February, 1913. That same
month John Coleman, our third child, was
born, and I now decided to devote
myself to writing.
We were a long way from home. My income
depended solely upon the sale
of magazine rights. I had not had a book
published at that time, and therefore
no book royalties were coming in. Had I failed
to sell a single story during
those months, we would have been broke again.
But I sold them all.
That I had to work is evidenced by a graph
that I keep on my desk showing
my word output from year to year since 1911.
In 1913, it reached its peak,
with 413,000 words for the year.
I had been trying to find a publisher who
would put some of my stuff into
book form, but I met with no encouragement.
Every well-known publisher
in the United States turned down "Tarzan
of the Apes", including
A.C. McClurg & Co., who finally issued
it, my first story in book form.
It's popularity and its final appearance
as a book was due to the vision
of J. H. Tennant, editor of the New York
Evening World. He saw its possibilities
as a newspaper serial and ran it in the Evening
World, and the result was
that other papers followed suit. This made
the story widely known, and
resulted in a demand from readers for the
story in book form, which was
so insistent that A.C. McClurg & Co.
finally came to me after they
rejected it and asked to be allowed to publish
it.
And that's how I became a writer!