Chapter X: Part 10

A general tabulation of the above shows that of 111 writers (110 of whom are tabulated) 51 give no thought to readers at any time and that 5 do so for selling but not for artistic purposes, a total of 56.

Only 14 state flatly that they bear the reader in mind habitually during the first writing of the story; 11 do so to some extent, 5 to less degree, 2 for clearness only, 1 for technical material only. A total of 33.

Those who do not consider the reader when writing but do so at other times number 22--16 when revising, 6 during preliminary work.

Those who consider the reader at any time--during writing, revision or preliminary work--number 55.

During the actual writing those who do not consider the reader at all number 78 against 33 who do to at least some degree.

During revision those who do not consider reader number 62 (56 + 6) against 49 (33 + 16) who do. Remember that, through my error, to only approximately half the answers was revision made a specific part of the question.

During preliminary work there were 72 (56 + 16) who do not against 39 (33 + 16) who do. (It is reasonable to believe that if the preliminary work had been specifically mentioned in the question there would have been more replies on this point and, since all those who do mention it answer affirmatively, that a fair proportion, perhaps a majority, of the replies would have been affirmative.)

The answers as a whole seem to leave the question largely one of individual taste or method. A more careful consideration, however, will discover a common underlying principle for all and, in doing so, go far toward clarifying our concept of "technique."

Literature is an expression: of what you please, but an expression. To "express" inevitably implies some one to whom you express. As one answerer puts it, one must always write to "interpret." No interpreting is done unless it is done to some one.

To interpret or express with no thought of those to whom you interpret or express, without knowing whether your message reaches them or considering means of insuring its reaching them, is a completely idiotic performance.

To say that art is self-expression answers the above by making the artist himself the person to whom he expresses or interprets. Such a performance, if established, seems rather unimportant in itself. Literature, or art, however you may define these terms, should be a thing of world importance. The self-expression of a lone individual, reaching no one but himself, would seem a mere ephemeral atom by comparison. Nor is it credible that most of our writers would continue to write if they knew no one would ever read what they wrote.

Would any of them? Yes. And if what an artist writes solely for self-expression, being found good in its creator's eyes, is then passed on to others, it was none the less written for self-expression alone. If he has written entirely uninfluenced by the thought or expectation of popularity, fame, money or any other consideration except the impulse to create artistically, he has undoubtedly written with no thought of other readers.

That is, with no conscious thought of other readers. But the fact remains that he has expressed himself, or interpreted, to some human understanding. By recognized human symbols, in accordance with commonly accepted human standards. In this case it happened that the human understanding to which he interpreted was his own, but that does not alter the essentials of the act. He himself is a representative of the human race and he can not interpret or express to himself without interpreting or expressing to their representative. He is, however little he may think of himself as such, merely their proxy.

You will have noticed in the answers that many of those who do not consider the reader state that they make their own judgment the test, constitute themselves the sole critics, develop another self to serve as critic. In other words, this "other self" is made the judge of their success in interpreting to human understanding by recognized methods in accordance with commonly accepted standards. It is the writer's very own, yet it reduces to nothing more than his individual knowledge and application of human understanding in general--and of general human reactions, standards and valuations. It is altogether individual to himself, yet, like himself, it can be composed of nothing but the elements common to the human race in general, however they may be transmuted by his individuality. A proxy for the race, it is, in fact, "the reader." However strongly individualized, it is still a representative, a composite, a standard.

The writer divides into self and other self, into the writer in his strictly creative capacity and the writer in his critical capacity as adapter of his creations to the demands of the common human standards of expression and understanding. The two, of course, are inextricably combined and never twice combined alike. The writer may be conscious of their working hand in hand during creation, or may be altogether oblivious to his critical self until the creative outpouring is finished. But whether he be conscious or unconscious of the fact, the two are always present. For the creative self can create out of nothing except human elements and his critical self is his knowledge of human elements; the creative self can express to human understanding only through the critical self's knowledge of human understanding. And the methods by which the creative self interprets and expresses those elements to that understanding are not known to it from birth but are taught to it gradually by the critical self as the latter absorbs them from life.

His self creates, expresses; his other self tells him how to express, is the adapter of his creations to the demands of the common human standards of expression and understanding--is his guide as to technique. His _technique_ is his knowledge, or applied knowledge, of all that perfects expression, and his technique is altogether in charge of his other self, the proxy for readers in general. _Technique is wholly based on consideration of readers._

The other self, to serve as critic, guide and test, must be master of all principles, rules, formulas and methods that facilitate and perfect expression so far as the writer knows them--must be master of all the technique at his command. The other self can function without the creative self's being aware that it is functioning, but only if technique has been so thoroughly absorbed and assimilated that the other self can apply it automatically, working in perfect unison with the creative self or, if you like, having become identified with the creative self or taught its knowledge thoroughly to the creative self. To just the degree that his technique is not thoroughly assimilated, to that degree will the creative self be conscious of it--and, probably, distracted and slowed up by it.

It is impossible that all technique should be thus thoroughly assimilated and unconscious. A writer might as well claim to have assimilated all human knowledge of art, of human nature and, for that matter, of nearly everything else. He can not be entirely unconscious of even all the technique at his command, unless he has ceased to develop and fallen into using only what technique has become automatic through long usage. If he is really an artist he will know that, no matter how great his artistry, there is always more technique for him to learn and there will always be in his store of technique bits newly added and not yet unconscious.

And technique is wholly based on consideration of readers. A writer can learn from other writers, but they in turn must, however little they may have realized the process, have built their technique, through their "other selves," their proxies for readers in general, from their knowledge of readers and of how to convey their ideas to them.

Dividing writers roughly into two classes, one class considers the reader more than he considers his art, playing for the reader's attention and favor directly, consciously, baldly. Still roughly speaking, that class may attain great popularity, but it is not likely to create literature. Its attention is on its tools rather than on its creating.

The other class holds first to art. It insists upon making its tools so much a part of the artist that he is not conscious of them. It shuts its eyes to other matters, concentrates on creating and produces most of what we call literature.

But this latter class must, of course, have its tools. To have them it must get them from somewhere, make them of something. The amazing thing is that, for the most part, it doesn't really know where it gets them, doesn't really know from what they are made nor the fundamental principles in accordance with which they are constructed. The proof of this lies in the answers to this question concerning the reader and to the questions concerning the imagination and technique.

The genius knows, whether or not he knows that he knows. But there are few geniuses. The average first-class writer does not know.

It is impossible to compute the degree to which their art suffers in consequence. It may be a great deal. It may, in some cases, be very little, for after all, being human beings, they must have some kind of subconscious understanding of the general fundamental nature and purpose of their tools. But certainly their art does suffer, in degree varying with the individual, as a result of their lack of definite, clear-cut, conscious understanding of both their tools and their process. For they are working blindly to this extent. If a writer adopts a piece of another man's technique or finds one for himself and if it proves to suit his case, there may be no loss in that transaction itself, but he has added nothing to his ability to select a next piece of technique with understanding discrimination.

Whatever the degree of damage to the experienced writer, the harm is tremendous in the case of the beginner or comparative beginner. He looks at the work of others and finds many tools; he turns to books, teachers and courses for specific instructions and has tools handed to him, generally by the clothes-basketful. Each is for a specific purpose and neither the tools nor the purposes are correlated in accordance with any fundamental principle. No one can tell the specific purpose of any tool of technique with sufficient fullness and discrimination to cover its use in all cases, and the poor beginner is given no fundamental understanding whereby he can make intelligent application as the varying cases arise in his work. The results, registered in the unceasing flow of manuscripts across the editorial desks of magazines and book houses, are pathetic. What would be the results in law or medicine or teaching if they were practised without conscious and very definite knowledge of the fundamental principles upon which their rules are based?

The present chief obstacle to successful teaching of the art of writing is lack of correlation of the rules of technique to fundamental basic principles. The rules of technique have no other purpose than to facilitate and perfect expression. There can be no test of the success of expression except the person to whom one expresses--the reader. Technique will remain a rather vague and chaotic matter, with a corresponding difficulty in learning it, until the reader-test is applied to its rules to prove their soundness and to refer them back to the fundamental principles which alone can give the writer an understanding that will enable him really to assimilate his technique and to apply and modify a rule to fit each one of the myriad cases that will arise.

The answers to the next question and to some later questions of the questionnaire will give further insight into the nature and practical use of technique.

QUESTION V

_Have you had a classroom or correspondence course on writing
fiction? Books on it? To what extent did this help in the
elementary stages? Beyond the elementary stages?_

ANSWERS

=Bill Adams=: No course of any sort.

=Samuel Hopkins Adams=: No technical course of any kind. Such books as I have looked into only served to befog my mind.

=Paul L. Anderson=: No course in fiction writing; stringent course in the handling of words, in prep. school, college and since.

=William Ashley Anderson=: I have never "studied" short story or fiction writing in any popular form.

=H. C. Bailey=: I know nothing of any course of instruction.

=Edwin Balmer=: I was in short story writing classes both at Northwestern University and at Harvard, and I do not think they did me any good; in fact, in neither university was my writing approved. The teachers encouraged models of the past; I was writing after present-day models and therefore was criticized. It did not worry me because I used to sell to newspapers my classroom themes, and I thought the newspaper editors knew more about writing than the professors.

=Ralph Henry Barbour=: I have had no classroom or correspondence course in writing fiction. I was born too early for either. I have not read--through--any books on the subject. I am not, therefore, able to judge any of these. I have my own ideas, though, on the subject of being taught to write fiction. Being of little value, I'll keep them to myself.

=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: I never, thank God, took any course in writing fiction. It might help some but I am sure from my experience with college English that it would have only made me self-conscious.

=Nalbro Bartley=: No. I'm very much against courses in writing, schools for authorship, journalism, etc.,--even if people do live them down. From what I have seen, it produces a sort of professional-amateur and we have so many of them just now and so few people doing the things which would, if they were inclined that way, make them ultimately write. I mean--you can't write unless you know what you are writing about and technique is a thing belonging to a desk job, something which can be acquired after you have either vicariously or otherwise been in the arena. Personally, I found being a cub reporter on a paper for two years, a special writer for two years and then--just going to it with rejection-slips as my own teacher and life my classroom the most satisfactory route.

=Konrad Bercovici=: No, no, no, no.

=Ferdinand Berthoud=: _NO!_ I don't think even God himself could write a decent story from any classroom or correspondence-school course if He hadn't the background. I know a man who is a critic for the ---- Correspondence School, and, from what I can see of it, the sole end and aim of his organization is to string the poor, deluded aspiring writer along and soak him for all he is worth. He tells me that out of over a thousand stories he went over during last year _not one_ was good enough to hit a magazine.

=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: No course of any kind in writing. Am considering one.

=Farnham Bishop=: Wrote my first school "composition" at the age of ten, my last one at eighteen, all in the same school, under the same teachers, who encouraged creative work, criticized sanely, and banged English grammar into me in the good old-fashioned way. Wrote for and later edited the school paper. Also turned out a lot of wild kid stuff in collaboration with another chap, and illustrated by Dwight Franklin, for private circulation only.

My pal died just as we were about to enter Harvard together. His death, and a douse of purely negative and rather supercilious criticism from an overworked instructor in Freshman English took all the fun out of writing. By the time I began to find myself at Harvard, I was in the Law School. Failed there, swung over into the Graduate School, took English 5 under Dean Briggs, English 2 (Shakespeare) under Professor Kittredge, and a course on Milton under Professor Nielson--all three the livest of live wires. Worked my way through an extra year just to take Professor Baker's English 47--the course on playwriting.

The school and graduate school courses helped me much more than the undergraduate work in college, mainly, I think, because of the difference in the personality of the teachers. I learned much more from the men--the pick of the men--who taught me than I did from the textbooks.

=Algernon Blackwood=: No. I began writing at the age of thirty-six because I could not keep it back. I preferred an evening thus engaged to any pleasure, social, theatre, music or anything else. After a day of hard, uncongenial business, the imaginative release on paper was my real recreation.

=Max Bonter=: I have never read any literature on fiction writing.

=Katharine Holland Brown=: Some classroom work, which was very valuable in elementary work. And, too, the classroom insistence on system and unity and all the virtues has always been valuable--when it has been heeded.

=F. R. Buckley=: I once took half a course (at the age of eighteen)--in short story writing (at a university). I had already written and sold several yarns. That half-course killed me dead for five years. I was self-conscious, and instead of telling a story I was inclined to wonder whether the climacteric was all right, or if the anti-climax had been put out-of-doors for the night. I now avoid anybody who wants to talk nomenclature as being much more harmful than the devil, and inexpressibly worse company.

=Prosper Buranelli=: I read two books on short story writing. Got a couple of very elementary ideas. Got practical training writing Sunday stories under a discerning editor. That counted. If a plumber serves an apprenticeship to learn his trade--is a writer's craft any less exacting in the matter of skill?

=Thompson Burtis=: I have never had a course on writing fiction. I have read one book on it. All the help I ever got from it, as far as I can remember, is to have it impressed on my mind that a story must build up to a climax, which I believe I knew before. I had sold stories before I ever read the book. However, I believed it helped me a little at the start. Beyond the elementary stages, I can not see how it has helped me at all.

=George M. A. Cain=: Never took any such courses. Never learned anything from a book on the subject. I am strong for the idea of a correspondence school of writing, financed by publishers, free to pupils, handled by a man or men of real editorial experience or wide variety in authorship, ready and willing to be brutally frank with the hopeless, and capable of pointing out certain technical facts to those who can submit something of promise. Such a fact I am going to mention under XI. I do not see how any outside help can carry beyond the most elementary stages of actual writing for publication, unless it might be in the "trade journal" line of market information.

=Robert V. Carr=: Little schooling, no course of any kind on writing.

=George L. Catton=: Have had two correspondence courses in writing fiction, but they did me little good. To tell the truth, I have never read either of them through, and yet I have the diplomas that were given for the final lesson answers. My own private opinion is that a man may be taught to write, but if he hasn't a talent for "telling" a story he might better never tackle it. Too much "rules and you-must and you-mustn't" are plain murder to talent. The only training a man needs is training in what he doesn't know; all other is waste of time and sand on his fire. The only sane course of training for a writer is to find out first what he doesn't know and then give him just that and not another damn thing! It's a lot harder to forget than to learn, and the "rules" of yesteryear are the mistakes of to-day. The world do move! Have read several books on authorship and found that there was little in them that I didn't already know. Sounds egotistical, but it's a fact nevertheless. No, I can't say that courses or books ever helped me. Corrections made on a manuscript or two and a bit of advice slammed at me with a curse behind it was all I needed.

=Robert W. Chambers=: Rot!

=Roy P. Churchill=: Part of a correspondence course. A number of books. These were a great help in elementary stages. Some help later on.

=Carl Clausen=: Never had any.

=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: I have had very little education of any kind, except a varied experience and a lot of adventures and a long apprenticeship on a newspaper which prided itself on its literary excellence.

=Arthur Crabb=: I never had any education in fiction writing except from literary agents and editors.

=Mary Stewart Cutting=: I have never had any tuition at all on story writing.

=Elmer Davis=: No. Probably need it.

=William Harper Dean=: No courses in writing. I have some books purchased years ago--I'll swear I never got a thing from them. I am hopelessly confused when I try to follow such things. Of course that's because of my own type of mind--others, I know, get a great deal from books on technique and the like.

=Harris Dickson=: As a very young boy I started to write poetry. And did you ever think how much this may help? How it leads one to cast about for the exact word, for a word that balances with the sentence both in thought and rhythm? Well, it does. After that I wrote a few rotten short stories, one of which brought me five dollars. Then several historical novels, because I had read so much of our southwestern colonial history until I came to know the people. And I also knew the country. Out of this grew several pioneering sword and cloak novels of Louisiana and Mississippi.

My first magazine work was a special article which dealt with my criminal experiences in the city court. Then I began to write short stories of southern life, largely of negro life.

=Captain Dingle=: Neither course nor books. Lacking the educational furniture of a writer, it has always seemed to me that the sort of stuff I turn out must come bluntly from me, and that no amount of study will help, except the study of MEN.

=Louis Dodge=: Alas, I have had no classroom or correspondence aids. There's a knot to unravel. Things can be taught, certainly; but shall we learn to do a thing as others would do it? Did Columbus? Gallileo? Buddha? Shakespeare? Lincoln? Marconi? I suspect rules are like clothes: you ought to get good ones and then forget all about them.

=Phyllis Duganne=: No courses or books in writing. But I've had advice from older authors, which is immensely valuable. If teachers of writing fiction were authors themselves, I think they would be very helpful.

=J. Allan Dunn=: I have had no classroom or correspondence course nor have I read entirely any book on writing fiction. I have received considerable help in the beginning from advice given by an editor. Certain of his suggestions are strong with me to-day, such as his simile for making a true rope of the story and tucking in all the ends.

I was greatly indebted also in the beginning to an agent of mine--since retired--Helen Gardenhire, who taught me to keep my characters moving when they were on the stage, to take them off when they were not needed and not to let my hero stray up back-stage too often. In other words, continued and precise action.

For myself I conceive my story as a play. I try not to destroy the illusion or halt the action, not to take my audience round back of the scenes and never to let down the curtain and come out in front to make talk. I don't say I live up to this. I try to. But my first two yarns were accepted, I am sure, with all their faults of technique because they had been done over and over and over--because I had no real technique those days.

It is hard to apply, to set down, this psychology of the art of writing. Jack London used to say "you've got to learn the tricks, old man, then it will go easily." I try to regard a rejected story as I would any article of merchandize refused by customers--and find out what is the matter with it. I do not believe in correspondence schools for writers. The greatest advance lies in keeping at it and trying to find out what's wrong.

=Walter A. Dyer=: I never had any sort of instruction in fiction writing.

=Walter Prichard Eaton=: No, to this.

=E. O. Foster=: I have had no classroom or correspondence course in writing fiction. I have read one or two books on it and have not found they helped me to any great extent in short story writing.

=Arthur O. Friel=: Studied rhetoric, composition, etc., in school and college, but made no particular study of fiction work and such. Highly important as fundamentals.

=J. U. Giesy=: No.

=George Gilbert=: Took no course.

=Kenneth Gilbert=: I've read books on short story writing and found that they helped somewhat in the elementary stages, but I have yet to find one that is other than elementary. Recently, a set of volumes was sent to me on approval, after I had been assured that they were just what I had been looking for. I returned them when it dawned on me that I knew more about technique than the man who wrote them.

=Holworthy Hall=: No classroom or correspondence course. I buy every book on "fiction writing" I can find. The majority of them are classed in my library as "humor." That is why I buy them. In the last ten years, only six books of this sort have emerged from that class; generally, they are funny without being short enough.

=Richard Matthews Hallet=: I did not fall to writing fiction until I had left the classroom; and I never took a correspondence course in same. I think there is a big field for a book on certain practical features, such as you hint at. I have a shelf full of books on rhetoric and etymology, but nothing on how to write fiction. After all, it's a process. If it goes on in you at all, you can chip and file at it; if it doesn't go on, you have to seek other trades. I'm a border-line case.

=William H. Hamby=: In the beginning I took a three months' correspondence course and had real benefit from it.

=A. Judson Hanna=: No, all around.

=Joseph Mills Hanson=: Never have had any course on fiction writing other than in English courses at school. I have, however, taken magazines for writers and read books on the subject, and do still. I believe both to have been helpful in the early stages of writing for publication, and that they are still helpful. It is stimulating to read of the experience of others in one's own craft and to digest their suggestions and the suggestions of those who endeavor to be instructors in the art of narration, whether or not one attempts to follow their pronouncements.

=E. E. Harriman=: Never had a correspondence course or classroom training in writing. Read a book and spent two hours over one by ----. These helped me some in the elementary stages. Got most help in plot writing or making from a little sheet published by Willard Hawkins, Denver, in one page written by him. He concentrated the whole thing and made it as plain as a pikestaff. Epitomized it.

=Nevil G. Henshaw=: I've never taken any kind of course in writing, although at first I read a book or two on the subject. They helped in telling me what not to do. But, if I've learned anything at all, it is due almost entirely to the criticism and counsel of kindly editors.

=Joseph Hergesheimer=: Nothing--none!

=Robert Hichens=: I spent a year in a school of journalism in London. I haven't specially studied many books on writing, but I have studied many of the best prose writers.

=Roy de S. Horn=: I had a correspondence course in writing, but I never finished it. I finished twenty-eight of the forty lessons and then went at the game directly. But I still buy and study books on it whenever I can find a new one. And I frequently sit down and study a current story just as I was taught to do in the old course. I believe that both the course and the books were and are of incalculable assistance. The great thing to the beginner of a course is that they are short cuts. They give him other authors' experiences and deductions in concentrated form. They make him get a clear idea of what he is about. And most of all they tell him what not to write, thus saving him the trouble and delay of finding out by personal experiment.

=Clyde B. Hough=: I have had no course of any sort on writing fiction. Have read a few text-books and the greatest impression they made on me was that I must work hard, must expect many disappointments, but that I must never holler "'nough." They, the text-books, are agreed, and they're right, that the time to holler "'nough" is before you start at the game.

=Emerson Hough=: Thank God, no, I never did.

=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: (First and second questions) No.

=Inez Haynes Irwin=: I took writing courses in my early twenties for two years at Radcliffe College. I think these courses were an enormous help _then_, because it was so stimulating to be writing in a group. Also it developed my taste and strengthened my ambition. It helped me to acquire the habit of writing. Beyond these elementary stages, I think it was of no special assistance. And in the case of a girl like my niece, Phyllis Duganne, it would be, I am sure, utterly unnecessary. She grew up in a household in which there were always three writers and, when visitors came, sometimes six. She acquired her technique painlessly as artists' children learn to paint. She can not remember when she began to write and I am sure she has no memories of difficulties in learning to write. Her first short story was accepted when she was sixteen and her first novel was published before she was twenty-one. No course in writing could have helped her much.

=Will Irwin=: I never had any formal instruction in story writing except the expert coaching of Gellett Burgess in collaboration with whom I wrote my first two books of fiction, and later the criticisms of my wife who is a better technician than I.

=Charles Tenney Jackson=: As to "classroom, correspondence, text-books on writing," I am innocent of all of 'em. Never had any, read any.

=Frederick J. Jackson=: No classroom course on writing fiction. No books. Correspondence course, yes. In 1913 a complete course from an editor. I sent him thirty or forty stories. He returned them all and had so little to do in those days that he sent a letter criticizing or commenting upon each story. He made a bull's eye with each shot of criticism. I made a hell of a lot of mistakes, but never made the same one twice. The letters of this bird kept me interested in writing, made me keep on, thereby ruining the makings of a live-wire press agent or advertising man. I sold a lot of the stories he returned, mostly due to the hints he dropped.

Did this help beyond the elementary stages? It did. It made me determine to learn the writing game so that some day I could make the above-mentioned editor apologize when returning a story. Something over one hundred and sixty magazine and picture stories sold is his pupil's record so far. The said pupil considers that he is still serving an apprenticeship in the writing game. If he works hard enough he may be able to graduate by the time he's thirty-five.

=Mary Johnston=: No.

=John Joseph=: Have had no "classroom" or other instruction, except such as I have received from kindly disposed editors. And these little notes are highly prized, believe me.

=Lloyd Kohler=: About four or five years ago I subscribed to the ---- course of the ---- Correspondence School. However, I don't believe that I sent in over two or three of the lessons. I was in the Navy at the time, and whoever has been in the "outfit" knows that the average sailorman is lucky if he can write a letter home occasionally. However, I think that I digested pretty thoroughly ----'s book on the short story. Since that time I have read a great number of books on fiction writing. There is no doubt but what they serve a very great purpose, but there must be a natural talent for the work first--of that I am satisfied.

A word as to genius and talent. One chap has said that genius is hard work, or words to that effect. I don't agree. For instance: I might study music for fifty years and at the end of that period I'm well satisfied that I wouldn't even be able to extract a harmonious note from a jew's-harp. On the other hand, I believe that if there is such a thing as genius, it is merely a combination, or the result of a combination, of _talent_ (every-day natural talent) and a capacity for _hard work_. If a fellow has a natural talent, plus a capacity for darned hard work, he's got the "makin's" for genius.

=Harold Lamb=: One classroom course in short story-writing, after I had had a good deal published--and filled space for the newspapers, bless 'em, and been part editor of a trade journal. I could not hear anything the professor said, but at the time his book was good reading. Beyond the elementary stages it helped a good deal. In clearing up ideas before beginning work, and following the thread when a story was begun. (I think I missed a lot by not studying it more closely, being certain at the time that I knew more than editors or professors.)

=Sinclair Lewis=: Yes, classroom in Yale--that _only_ (no books, etc.). Classroom of NO value at all.

=Hapsburg Liebe=: I dickered a little (dabbled, rather) with some so-called story doctors along at the beginning. I don't believe it helped much. I've always had to do things my own way (very likely it's usually the wrong way).

=Romaine H. Lowdermilk=: I don't know whether to be sorry or glad to admit I have had no special training. I suppose I am still in the elementary stage to a certain extent. I have purchased some books on story writing and the like and have long taken the ---- [magazine] but can sum the results as more inspirational than anything else. I have learned more about the actual wants of editors from chance notes they have sent with rejected or semi-accepted manuscripts. The actual building of the story is more common sense than anything else and I have done what I have done by plain "bare-handed writing." Still, there is something wrong with this system, I know, for my best stories--those that appeal most to me and the ones I put the most into--have been rejected everywhere. Why is that? To me they are far better than many I have sold, still they don't suit any editor. The story is surely there and possibly if the editors knew how I love to revise they would mention what seemed the matter. Still, they haven't the time and don't care that much, I suppose. Possibly a professional critic could spot the trouble, but I doubt it. I haven't tried it. But I suppose each writer has the same trouble.

=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: Outside of college rhetoric, I've had no instruction in fiction writing beyond the helpful letters of editors. Nor books, until after I had been writing for years. I can see that the books would have been a great help, possibly, had I had them in the elementary stages. But I was abroad and didn't happen to know about them.

=Rose Macaulay=: Never had them.

=Crittenden Marriott=: No to everything. Twelve years' newspaper work all over the world before I tried fiction.

=Homer I. McEldowney=: I have had a couple of courses in the short story, under a mighty fine scout--Doc Weirick, one of the best in the English department here at Illinois--a good-natured, long suffering, able critic, and a fertile source of interesting information. I've got a lot out of the past year of hobnobbing with him. The course helped considerably, first, because it made us get down with nose to the key-board and knock out words, great stacks of them; and second, because there was a good man in charge, with ready and worth-while criticism of yarns submitted, and a real knowledge of what to read in the course. We "learned the way to promotion and pay," as Kipling has it, not fundamentally from the pages of a book, but from writing.

=Ray McGillivray=: I took aboard huge hunks of literary fodder in college, going the pace that killed--originality--through every course, from Old English to a postgrad with Barrett Wendell. Then, after applying this undigested knowledge to such pursuits as manual labor at Sears, Roebuck's, mixing ruby champagne cocktails at Mouquin's, and cutting up a cadaver at Medical School (ugh!), I reached, by devious byways of labor and loafing, a post as sub-sub-editor on one of the most unconventional national-circulation magazines in the world. I had contributed a few personal narrative articles, and needed a job.... The editor, a spunky Irishman (gosh, come to think of it, I believe he claimed to be English!) jumped all over my "lit'ry allusions." He appeared abruptly before me one day, thrust two photos under my nose, and bade me assimilate an eyeful. I obeyed. One picture showed a Japanese trench outside Port Arthur. Headless bodies, detached limbs and blobs of entrails were festooned about the broken entanglements. It was brutal, terrible, but it depicted war and death. The second photo also dealt with death, but differently. Six men were carrying a draped coffin, in which rested a man who in his lifetime had won a way into the heart of a nation. There was nothing in the picture save the varied expressions of restrained, sincere sorrow on the faces of the dead man's six friends.

"This trench picture," quoth my boss, "is Journalism. This other is Art. Now, _to hell with Art_!" By that he meant that henceforth I was to tie a jingling can to my Aristophanes, my Tacitus--yea, even my Bullfinch and my finchless Bull. And I did. You never would have suspected how many miles of galley-proof a Socrates-Six could cover with five cylinders stripped out of the chassis!

=Helen Topping Miller=: I had been selling short stories for about twelve years before I read any books on the subject. I have never found a book from which I felt that I received any material benefit. Many books have inspired me--but none of them ever helped me in the actual work of writing.

=Thomas Samson Miller=: Never had a lesson of any kind from any one in story writing. Don't believe in them. One's got to learn how to write by writing; to learn what not to do and what to do by experience. My only study was to take a short story that appealed to me in a magazine and _live_ with it; cut out all other reading. Analyzed its plot, its characterization. Wrote out every word written in it about a certain character to see just how the author got the character across. Wrote the story from memory. Read it so far, put it down, then tried to write the rest out of my head.

=Anne Shannon Monroe=: I have had neither classroom nor correspondence work in writing fiction. Have read no books on the subject that I can remember, save a few stray passages from Flaubert--seems to me he knew how.

=L. M. Montgomery=: I never took any kind of a course in writing fiction. Such things may be helpful if the real root of the matter is in you, but I had to get along without them. I was born and brought up in a remote country settlement, twenty-four miles from a town and ten from a railway. There I wrote my first stories and my first four books. So no beginner need feel discouraged because of remote location or lack of literary "atmosphere."

=Frederick Moore=: No. There may be people who can teach story writing--that is, stimulate to endeavor. The old hand can give tips to the beginner that keep him from getting off the track, but the writer must actually do his own creating. The creative impulse must exist to create, though technique is another thing. I believe everybody has the creative impulse in some degree. If it is weak, technique will avail nothing. The experts on technique are generally deficient in creative ability. If they had both, their expertness in technique would be smothered--that is, not apparent--while their creative ability would make them rich and famous. To put it another way, the mass of readers are not conscious of technique and simply say, "That writer writes fine stories." But the expert, or the novelist, says: "He is a wizard at creation, and good at technique." Of course, technique may come as naturally to a writer as his creative ability--he or she may know how to handle the story so as to get the strongest effect, and we get, say, another _Robinson Crusoe_. But it is very apparent, in reading the complete story by DeFoe that he did not know where he was going when he set out. He flopped all over the shop until he got to his island, and I am convinced that at that point he struck his gait and knew what he was about. Every story presents its own problem in technique--that is, merely the best way to tell that kind of a story. And there is a best way for every story--a way that fits the environment, the characters, and the happenings in that particular combination. Once in a dog's age it is done, like _Ethan Frome_, or _The Red Badge of Courage_, or _The Call of the Wild_. I regard every story as an experiment in chemistry. It is possible to blow yourself up, so to speak, or discover an elixir of life. Most writers are known for one piece of work, though they have done many others. DeFoe wrote volumes and is known for _Robinson Crusoe_, while _Lorna Doone_ was the work of a novelist who wrote other volumes; also, consider _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. And I believe that each of these three books was written at just the right moment to insure success: _Crusoe_, when the English were fired with foreign exploration, _Lorna Doone_ when a peaceful life in the English countryside had become the ideal, and _Uncle Tom_ when the nation needed its arguments on slavery focussed into a tract which could be handed out with a kind of "Here! Read this, and see what you think of slavery _then_!" Also, Empey's _Over the Top_ came when the men getting ready for war needed something in the way of a text-book on war--"This is the sort of thing we can expect to get into."

To me, one of the most discouraging things (but not personally) is that the higher the art in fiction, the less the number of appreciative readers. Of course, I mean by that the kind of novels in which little actually happens outside the minds of the characters. I do not say such novels are best, but most critics do. And why do critics always criticize from a "trade standpoint," that is, as if novels were written for other novelists? The story that is most violently attacked by critics generally sells best. I am not saying that stories are written to sell, but that they are written to entertain, to arouse emotions, to give an experience in life that is likely to be missing in the life of the reader. The reader likes to see himself in the condition described and to wonder how he would react. And most great books have had difficulty in reaching print. So many editors are shouting for original stories, but they are actually afraid of stories that are too original--until that type of story has proved successful. Then they all want something like it, and we develop another "school of fiction." But don't blame the editor for that--the public must be trained to that type, and an editor has to be a practical man if he wants to continue to edit. Merely because a story is bizarre does not make it necessarily original, and if original, not necessarily desirable. What editors mean when they say "originality" is a new angle on an old idea or an old plot--but the age not apparent.

I believe that the best fiction written in this country today is being published in the so-called "cheap magazines." That is, magazines devoted to fiction alone. They actually cost more than many of the "better magazines," and they are free of "jazz," degeneracy and sex. Coated paper and good illustrations do not give quality to fiction. The Bible printed on news stock would still be the Bible, and the same is true of all other fiction, from Shakespeare to date. There can be just as much art used in telling an adventure story as in any other kind--and as a matter of fact, more is needed in that kind of story than in the story which depends on sex for its interest. The fiction magazines have to deliver the goods, and many of them have a higher manuscript-account for their material than the fancier looking products. The so-called "cheap fiction" magazines have really developed our best American writers, generally speaking. These magazines have provided a market for the beginners and have encouraged them during their apprenticeship. If the same writers had to wait until they were able to sell to the "highbrows," many writers famous to-day would never have struggled on. Many a person who has paid two dollars for a book held up as a fine piece of work is unaware that the chauffeur read the same story as a serial in a "cheap magazine." And _Treasure Island_ was sold as a serial to a "boy's shocker" and published under the name of _Captain John North_. Most people know _Robinson Crusoe_ as a classic, in spite of the fact that it has shipwreck, cannibalism, and killings galore. So "blood and thunder" comes nearer to representing life than many a devious study of some maniac's brain written in Russia, for all the loud cries of the critics and others. For several years past the world has been all "blood and thunder" and many woke up to the fact that the human animal is given to violence and murder. This must all be considered by the person who sets out to write--and that person must remember that art is not always done with deliberation. Sometimes it just happens.

=Talbot Mundy=: No.

=Kathleen Norris=: I had some college work in "daily themes," a sort of primary fiction work, for some six months, and I think it did me incalculable good. (This was before I ever wrote a line.)

=Anne O'Hagan=: No.

=Grant Overton=: I have never had any training in writing except what I have learned or sensed myself. I have read books about it but none of them amounts to a great deal.

=Sir Gilbert Parker=: Never. Fiction can't be taught!

=Hugh Pendexter=: No.

=Clay Perry=: At the age of fifteen years I subscribed to a combination course in journalism and short-story writing. It was absurd. In college I took a course in "The Study of the Novel" which helped steer my course toward a liking for good fiction ... perhaps. I have never read anything on fiction writing which helped me, that I know of, either in the elementary stages or beyond them. One friend who writes helped me more by a few suggestions and criticisms than anything I have ever read on the subject of writing.

=Michael J. Phillips=: No.

=Walter B. Pitkin=: I never studied writing under any teacher. I dodged all writing courses in college because they bored me to death and seemed to be engaged in unutterable piffle. I never read any text-books on rhetoric or style or story writing until I had been a professional journalist and writer for nearly ten years!

=E. S. Pladwell=: I have never studied anything in books or classrooms about fiction. I have glanced over one or two books on writing, but have not found them simplified enough. They start off with their arguments and then ramble away into the realms of theories, technique and other things which tend to becloud the mind away from the few broad general rules.

=Lucia Mead Priest=: I have had a not very thorough classroom training, with whatever books were prescribed--Hill, Wendell, etc., etc.

I found them necessary, mildly stimulating. They brought me to the realization that literature was work of a profound character.

Everything has helped. I have not gone beyond the elementary stage. It is a big, big craft, a long, long trail.

=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: None.

=Frank C. Robertson=: I have had no classroom nor correspondence course and have read not to exceed a half dozen text-books on the subject, though I have long been a subscriber to the _Editor_ magazine and more recently to the _Writer's Monthly_. Such reading as I have done has helped, yet I am rather glad that I did not read enough at the start to become rule-bound. Now I think I have literary poise enough that I can discard what is inapplicable to my own needs, and so I am constantly adding to my collection of books on the art of writing. Also, within the last two months, I have formed the habit of sending my stories to a capable critic before offering them to magazines. I wish now that I had adopted this method long ago. The resulting self-analysis of my own work has been of more value to me than any other one factor.

=Ruth Sawyer=: Neither.

=Chester L. Saxby=: I have read books on writing, but I found all of them vague and general or else too elementary. I have had a fair education in English, and I have the rudiments of an imagination for the English to work upon. The link between is for the most part a judgment of values (such as it is) gleaned in the college of hard knocks and nine danged slaving years of schooling in that institution, slaving and heart-rupture. But in beginning, books on writing and even courses certainly have their value. I've had the correspondence drill--with editors who've stood me up and knocked me down. But that's rough on the editors, if everybody does it.

=Barry Scobee=: Before I was twenty, or about that time, I took a course in short-story writing and newspaper also. Don't remember what school of correspondence. I may have acquired a few basic principles; it probably did me some good. I never had classroom instruction in writing. I have studied a dozen books on the subject of fiction writing. At first, for a year or two, I struggled along without even knowing there was such a thing as books on the subject, or without ever talking to a single person in the world who knew the first thing about writing. Then _The Editor_ began to help me, and various books, especially on plot and, I think, Price on the Drama. These were a tremendous help to me in the preliminary stages. A fuller answer will be found under VII.

=R. T. M. Scott=: I have never taken a course of any kind in fiction writing. I have breezed through a few books on short stories but I have never studied them. Most of the stories which I have sold have violated the rules laid down in these books. I am still in the elementary stage, however, and perhaps, some day, I shall be able to stick to the rules and still sell the stories.

=Robert Simpson=: I have had no classroom or correspondence course. Neither, as it happens, have I ever read any books on writing fiction. This was more a matter of chance than anything else. I've learned most of what I know of the technique of story writing from writing "bad ones" and finding out why they were bad; from the good advice of an editor or two, and from simple, cold-blooded analysis of my own and other men's work. This is a long and tedious process, but it has the advantage of being thorough if one is built for it. If I may say so, the method of study is largely up to the make-up of the individual, but, in agreement with a certain advertisement, "there are no short-cuts to quality."

=Arthur D. Howden Smith=: No.