"Now it makes no difference when or where or how a writer stumbles upon the idea which is to serve as his central purpose. It may spring from his head at a moment's notice like Athena, full armored — as was the case with the late Frank Norris, who, as has often been told, came one morning to his publisher's office, pale and trembling all over with excitement, and gasping out, almost inarticulately, "I've got a big idea! A great big idea! The biggest idea ever!" It was the outlined scheme for his trilogy of the Epic of the Wheat—the trilogy which began with The Octopus and The Pit, and which poor Norris did not live to round out with The Wolf."—Cooper, Frederic Taber. "The Author's Purpose." In The Craftsmanship of Writing, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1920.
