It is only after years of this sort of practice

To read this quote in the original source, you may download the book from the Gutenberg project, totally free. The book is not, in any way, a manual on how to write fiction yet it makes a lovely reading. (Yes, I’m copying the style).

<<“The young writer”, as Stevenson has said, “instinctively tries to copy whatever seems most admirable, and he shifts his admiration with astonishing versatility. It is only after years of this sort of practice that even great men [[1]] have learned to marshal the legion of words which come thronging through every byway of the mind.”>>

<<I am afraid I have not yet completed this process. It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind. Consequently, in nearly all that I write, I produce something which very much resembles the crazy patchwork I used to make when I first learned to sew. This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends—pretty bits of silk and velvet; but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to touch always predominated. Likewise my compositions are made up of crude notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions of the authors I have read. It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to acknowledge defeat.>> <<«There is no way to become original, except to be born so,» says Stevenson, and although I may not be original, I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial, periwigged compositions. Then, perhaps, my own thoughts and experiences will come to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of «The Frost King[2]» trammel my efforts. So this sad experience may have done me good and set me thinking on some of the problems of composition. My only regret is that it resulted in the loss of one of my dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos.>>

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[1] [I will open a bracket in order to add all those anonymous women and heroine writers who have left a track in our writing; whom Stevenson didn’t include in the list of the great. Such as: Christine Nöstlinger, Jean Webster, Anette Levy-Willard, Marguerite Duras and Virginia Wolf. Add as many as you want in your comments so we start adding women to that list of the great writers.]

[2] In her youth, Helen Keller wrote a children’s tale which was published and later, accused of plagiarism. She was found unwilling guilty. Which was quite difficult to prove since she would memorize anything she read through Braille’ before she could write anything and there was no way to know what she had read or not. She was deaf so she couldn’t have heard of it unless her teacher did translate the «plagiarism story» on her hands by signs. She couldn’t have read it alone cause it was when she was learning Braille. The tribunal resolve had the publishing person (her friend Mr. Anagnos) to avoid her from then on and it hurt enough for her to stop writing… For a lot of time after until she wrote My life with her.