Avery small man came shyly into the room. he stood before me looking very uncomfortable. "my name", he said, "is forester. c. s. forester." i nearly fell out of my chair. "are you joking? " i said. "no," he said, smiling. "that is me." and it was. it was the great writer himself, the inventor of captain hornblower and the best teller of tales about the sea. "look," he said. "i am too old for the war. the only things i can do to helps is to write things about britain for the american papers and magazines. a magazine called the saturday evening post will publish any story i write. i have contract with them.and i have come to you because i thing you might have a good story to tell about flying." "what do you want me to do? " i asked. "come and have lunch with me," he said. "and while we are eating, you can tell me about your most exciting adventures and i all write it up for the saturday evening post." i was thrilled. i had read all the hornblowers and just about everything else he had written. i had, and still have, a great love for books about the sea. and now here i was about to have lunch with somebody who, to my mind, was terrific. he took me to a small french restaurant near the mayflower hotel in washington. i tried to tell him about the most exiting or dangerous things thats happened to me when i was flying fighter planes. while we tried to eat our lunch, i was truing to talk and forester was trying to take notes. things were not going well. more than, i have never been much good at telling stories aloud. "look," i said. "if you like i all try to write down on paper what happened and send it to you. would not that be easier? i could do it tonight." that, though i did not know it at the time, was the moment that changed my life. "a splendid idea," forester said. "then i can put this silly notebook away and we can enjoy our lunch." he gave me an address where i could send the story, and then we forgot all about it and finished our lunch. that night i sat down and wrote my story. i started at about seven o,clock and finished at midnight. the story seemed to be telling itself. just for fun, when it was finished, i gave it a title. i called it a piece of cake. the next day i sent it off to mr forester. two weeks later, i received a reply from the great man. it said: well! i thought. nine hundred dollars! and they are going to published it! the next story i wrote was fiction. mr matson sold that one, too. then i wrote eleven short stories. all were sold to american magazines, and later they were published in a little book called over to you.
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