In 1912, a little book called The Fiction Factory came out. The subtitle was: Being the Experience of a Writer Who, for Twenty-Two Years, Has Kept a Story-Mill Grinding Successfully. It was by a man named William Wallace Cook using the pseudonym John Milton Edwards. (You can access the entire public-domain book at Gutenberg.org) The book is his no-nonsense account of becoming a successful pulp writer through discipline and hard work. His mind and his typing fingers were, to him, a factory, producing product for the various publications open to him.
