Quote by Mark Twain

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.

Summary

This quote by Mark Twain highlights the challenging nature of writing a novel without possessing the inherent gift for it. Twain suggests that without a clear idea of the story and only a few characters, incidents, and a setting in mind, a writer may initially intend to create a small tale. However, as the writer delves into the writing process, the story tends to expand, often becoming a book in itself. This quote emphasizes the organic and sometimes uncontrollable evolution of a narrative, which, according to Twain's personal experience, can unexpectedly grow beyond the writer's initial intentions.