HERE’S an interesting article from the October 1935 number of Writer’s Digest where Robert J. Hogan relates the writing process he used to create the lead story for the January 1936 issue of The Mysterious Wu Fang!

THE demand from readers for an article, showing how a professional writer’s mind works as he writes, has risen in recent months from a mild polite murmur to a steady daily yelp. Inadvertently we mentioned our desire to publish such article, and the hounds were off.

Robert J. Hogan, whose article on the subject is the one finally selected, writes us: “Believe me, this is the toughest job I’ve handled in a long time. I only hope your readers get as much help out of it as I got out of your magazine in the early stages. To lift the lid of the old bean and let your subscribers peer inside . . . gosh! what an assignment!”

Mr. Hogan flew for the U.S.A. during the War, and acted also as a boxing instructor at camp. After the War he was chief engineer for an aircraft corporation that took a beating in the depression. Bob Hogan started over again as a pick and shovel worker on a construction job.

Two years later he went into the home construction business for himself, and from there into selling real estate. His old love was aviation and “I was unhappy away from it. I took to writing to occupy my mind, writing flying stories for the pulps, on the back of the stationery of my real estate business. I have been a full-time writer for three years and sold my first story five years ago. I’ve sold to 35 magazines.

“I sell on contract 160,000 words a month, and lay off after three each day. I write about all the stuff that’s in the magazine ‘G-8 and His Battle Aces’ and I do the main story each month for Wu Fang, published by Popular Publications, 205 East 42nd St., New York City. The story that I talk about in the following article was sold today to Wu Fang and will appear in its January issue.”

• Download “Inside a Author’s Brain” (October 1935, Writer’s Digest)

DEMYSTIFIED. The cover of the issue in question of Robert J. Hogan’s The Mysterious Wu Fang! Hogan penned all seven lead stories for the magazine from September 1935 to the March 1936 issue when it folded.