“I’m going to be a writer, Dad. Miss Bowler says she wouldn’t wonder if I’d got it in me.”
”Oh? What are you going to write? Poetry?”
“Well, perhaps. But I don’t suppose that pays very well. I’ll write novels. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like The Constant Nymph.”
“You’ll want a bit of experience before you can write novels, old girl.”
“Rot, Daddy. You don’t want experience for writing novels. People write them at Oxford and they sell like billy-ho. All about how awful everything was at school.
“I see. And when you leave Oxford, you write one about how awful everything was at college.”
“That’s the idea. I can do that on my head.”
“Well, dear, I hope it’ll work. . . .”
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors (orig, pub. 1934)
