He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled
The Blog
8 Tips for Writing a Novel 
Guest Post by Jody J. Sperling If you’re given to quitting, writing novels isn’t for you. If you’re happier writing than reading, don’t bother writing. But if you’ve bolted your heels to concrete blocks, and if you view failure as a bridge over the black abyss, and if you’d rather be reading than climbing mountains […]
Read More Who are You Writing For, Anyway? This is a parable of a writer named Austin, and how he found his audience through writing four novels. Austin lived near a major metropolis in the United States, was middle class, and he wanted more than anything to become a writer. He read all the right people, went to all the right conferences, and […]
Read More How to Generate Unique Concepts for your Book What makes or breaks your novel is what exists before you write your first word: your central concept. The concept is so important. And yet it’s something that’s usually neglected when talking about writing craft. That’s because it’s much easier to talk about sentences, or plot, or characterization, or beginnings — or really anything else. […]
Read More Write Like a Billionaire If you were a billionaire, would you still be writing? If you answered yes, then clearly writing is your calling. But what would you do differently as a billionaire writer? Would you go to 10 conferences a year? Start up a writing retreat? Hire the most expensive editor you can find? Hire 6 different editors? […]
Read More Why Writers Need a Book Club (and 21 Tips to Make it Great!) So many articles about book clubs seem to be written by people who have never belonged to a book club. Boring, obvious information. I’m going to change that here. I have a lot of firsthand experience: My book club is called the Bookhouse Boys (yes, we have a name!). We’re five guys who’ve been meeting […]
Read More 12 Ways to End a Chapter (With Brilliant Examples) Every time a reader finishes a chapter, they have the chance to put down your book. Don’t let them. You want them to stay up to 3 a.m. even though they have work the next day, because that’s the type of reading experience they’ll gush to others about. You have to read this book. So […]
Read More How to Be a Happy Writer It’s true that people write the advice they need to hear, and I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t been the perfect model for a happy writer. I had some bad years. Mrs. Bookfox definitely saw the worst of it. Part of it was chemical issues, but also I had such extravagant fantasies about […]
Read More The Power of Quitting: Why Every Writer Should Learn to Quit When I was 31 years old, I’d been laboring over a novel for 5 years. It was a quagmire. I was hopelessly stuck in a plot that wouldn’t move, in characters that couldn’t elicit sympathy, and with ambitions that were far beyond my skill as a writer. When I’d started the novel, I had a […]
Read More Does Humility Help or Hurt Writers? I became a writer mainly because of pride. Growing up, I always had an excess of confidence. Maybe it was being a big fish in the small pond of the desert town of Hesperia, California, but I was supremely confident that I could do anything. So when figuring out what to do in life, I […]
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