"There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end"
About this Quote
Forester’s line is a straight-faced antidote to literary mythmaking: no muses, no hacks, no magic structural secret tucked in a Parisian notebook. Just the unglamorous mechanics of endurance. Coming from a working novelist best known for the Hornblower books - narratives engineered to move, to grip, to arrive - the sentence reads like a craftsman’s shrug at people treating novels as mystical artifacts instead of built objects.
The intent is partly corrective. Forester is poking at the romantic idea that “real” writers wait for inspiration or discover the story in a single incandescent burst. His version of artistry is procedural: start, keep going, finish. That apparent banality is the point. In an era when modernism had elevated fragmentation, experiment, and the glamour of difficulty, Forester insists on the oldest narrative technology: sequence. Not because he’s naïve about craft, but because he’s suspicious of procrastination disguised as theory.
The subtext is also a quiet moral stance. “Begin at the beginning” isn’t just about page one; it’s about committing to responsibility. “Continue to the end” is a rebuke to abandoned drafts and endless tinkering - the contemporary temptation to workshop a book forever, polishing the first chapter until it becomes a decorative paperweight. Forester makes the novel sound like a march. That’s what it is: a long campaign where discipline, not genius, decides who arrives.
The intent is partly corrective. Forester is poking at the romantic idea that “real” writers wait for inspiration or discover the story in a single incandescent burst. His version of artistry is procedural: start, keep going, finish. That apparent banality is the point. In an era when modernism had elevated fragmentation, experiment, and the glamour of difficulty, Forester insists on the oldest narrative technology: sequence. Not because he’s naïve about craft, but because he’s suspicious of procrastination disguised as theory.
The subtext is also a quiet moral stance. “Begin at the beginning” isn’t just about page one; it’s about committing to responsibility. “Continue to the end” is a rebuke to abandoned drafts and endless tinkering - the contemporary temptation to workshop a book forever, polishing the first chapter until it becomes a decorative paperweight. Forester makes the novel sound like a march. That’s what it is: a long campaign where discipline, not genius, decides who arrives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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