I filled two or three sheets of demy writing-paper, folded in octavo, with these memorandums.

They were put down with great brevity, yet explicitly enough to secure a perfect recollection of their meaning, within the time necessary for drawing out the story at full, in short paragraphs of two, three, four, five, or six lines each.
I then sat down to write my story from the beginning.

I wrote for the most part but a short portion in any single day.

I wrote only when the afflatus was upon me.

I held it for a maxim that any portion that was written when I was not fully in the vein told for considerably worse than nothing.