Writer's Notes

"I have never said that I have the ability to make up stories out of thin air; I often need an event or a character to start writing, but I always use my imagination, creativity and sense of drama to make the material my own." Maugham said. Since he was eighteen years old in 1892, Maugham has developed the habit of recording various creative materials at any time, a habit he has continued for more than fifty years. In 1949, Maugham, who was already seventy-five years old, carefully selected from the fifteen volumes of notes, memoranda and travel notes he had saved, and published this "Writer's Notes" with concise notes. This is undoubtedly one of Maugham's most important and authentic works. It is equivalent to making his "warehouse of writing materials", the ultimate secret of his creation, public to the public after officially giving up the creation of fictional literature. Although he later published two collections of essays and reviews, "What Happened" and "Viewpoints", "A Writer's Notes" can be seen as the starting point and end point of Maugham's literary creation, and it was his farewell to his long literary career.