FICTION WRITERS ON FICTION WRITING (continued 6)

Edgar Young: I center on the story.

Summary

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.

Theodore Seixas Solomons: I never had a course. I have studied, or rather carefully read, one or two books on writing, and numerous articles. I think that the idea of unity has been the main derivative to me. The rest I usually saw to be true enough, almost axiomatically, from general considerations of art, but I do not think they helped—probably more because I did not actually study such writings than because they are incapable of lending real help. I do not see how a proper study of them in connection with exercise in writing can fail to be beneficial. Yet such works, for the most part, are analyses of the reasons for things which must be understood instinctively and by experience, and then acquired, before the reasons make such appeal.

Raymond S. Spears: No literary course except reading, deliberately undertaken for certain purpose, as reading Ruskin to learn how to describe.

I've read and tried to profit by practical books, handbooks, books on authorship, writers' biographies, etc. But I find my own view-point and methods are nowhere described or much helped by experience of others.

Norman Springer: No. I once tried a university extension course in play writing. It was silly. Of course, I read all the books I could find on the subject of story writing. They didn't help much. They told me something about the mechanics of a story (though even this information was usually buried beneath mountains of pompous academic phraseology), but they never gave me a clue to the solution of the more important question that worries the beginner—"How can I infuse spirit into the story; how can I make it live?" This questionnaire is really the first attempt I have encountered to get behind the mechanics.

Being of the "self-raised" variety of writer, I've had some experience with the "How To Write a Story" books, and I confess they harmed rather than helped me. All those I opened merely told me in technical, often almost unintelligible language just what my story sense was telling me in simple language. I didn't find a single book that took me behind the mechanics of the story.

That is where the beginner is always trying to get to. About the hardest thing he has to learn is how to weigh, select and subdue thoughts. Memorizing all the rules and learning all of O. Henry's tricks by heart won't help him. But access to information such as your third query will bring out will help him. So will the news that he must discipline his imagination and make it obedient. Think how we run wild and waste ourselves in the beginning.

Julian Street: No courses. I've read, written and in my early stages been criticized by abler men—men like Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson. I think it well for the absolute greenhorn to read and learn everything he can about the art, but he must have the power to discriminate between good and bad advice; and he must know whether he himself wishes to aim high or aim low—whether he wishes to run the risk of trying to produce something that may possibly live, always facing the great danger of failing in that aim, or whether he wishes to write popular truck. That will be determined ultimately, I think, by the character and tastes of the aspirant, but the sooner he acquires a definite aim, the better for him.

T. S. Stribling: Have never had classroom or correspondence course in fiction. I did pay a dollar once to have a story criticized. Afterward I wrote to the man and offered him his criticism back if he would return my dollar, but he wouldn't do it.

Booth Tarkington: No course or books on writing fiction, ever.

W. C. Tuttle: I have never had any instructions on story writing, beyond the kindly help of a certain editor. Once upon a time I bought some books on short-story writing. After reading them I ached from the reaction. I understood that I was all wrong. But there seemed to be no help for it; so I hid the books and went back to work.

Lucille Van Slyke: Very superficial daily theme course in college my freshman year. Very bad for me, I think, because I did it easily, got good marks and took no pains whatever. Took me years to live that down! I have read and continue to read every book on fiction writing that I can find. In the elementary stages they helped a very little—oh, very little. Not their fault, but mine, because I did not see how to apply them to my case. Beyond the elementary stage I found that Polti's Thirty Six Dramatic Situations helped me to straighten out the plot difficulty I already mentioned. ——'s Short Story Writing did me good this way—I disagreed with it so violently that it cleared my ideas on many points—but I found myself singing, "Now mother has a sausage machine and to-day she said to me, Tom, Tom, hurry back home, there'll be sausages for your tea—"

Atreus von Schrader: I put in the winter of 1913 working with Walter B. Pitkin at Columbia; I had written, without success, for some time. His genius, for that is what it amounts to, gave me a foundation and understanding that have been invaluable. General formulas and methods can be used to great advantage; to the greatest advantage when practise has made their use instinctive.

T. Von Ziekursch: Never had anything in that line. Was introduced to a teacher of how to write fiction once and he bored me.

Henry Kitchell Webster: I've never had a classroom course or a correspondence course on writing fiction. I have read books on it, some of which interested me because I agreed with the writers and some of which interested me because I disagreed with them altogether. I am not conscious that the first sort ever caused me to cry out, "Eureka!" though I may have decided, over an item in the second, "This is what I never do."

G. A. Wells: I have had no classroom course in story writing and deplore that fact a great deal. Correspondence courses are valuable to this extent—they urge one to work and study by the reflection that he will have thrown away his money if he doesn't. The same results may be obtained by investing in a few good books on the subject of writing. I would strongly advise the beginner to let the correspondence schools alone. I have had much experience with them. None of them can possibly do what they so boldly assert in their literature. Not so long ago I paid ninety dollars cash for a course in picture play writing. For that sum I received two thin books of instruction, three detailed synopses of plays produced (all of them rotten!) and twelve pamphlets of lectures. I learned nothing that I had not previously learned from text-books got from the public library. Never again: (Right hand up and left on heart.)

It is of interest that most of these correspondence schools can't cite students who have been successful. One school cited me —— ——. Her stories appear in the —— but nowhere else that I have ever noticed. I do not call that success. That is the only school of correspondence of about a dozen I have investigated that can cite a student who has had anything published in a reliable magazine, and I think that unless such a school can show such graduates it is scarcely worth bothering about.

I attach great importance to books on the art of fiction writing. They have been of great value to me. The chief fault I find with these books is that they refer the student for examples to stories that are not easily available to a great many people. Too, they incline too much toward citation of the classics, such as Poe, Dickens, Thackeray and others. The student should have for his examples Kipling, O. Henry, London, Melville Post and the modern writers. Current magazine fiction is as a rule out of the question.

But after all the only way to learn to write fiction is to write fiction. I am of that number who contend that fiction writing can't be taught. It must be learned. But first of all one must have talent for it. That talent can't be acquired, though, given that, it can be cultivated. If one hasn't a talent for writing fiction all the teaching of all the teachers won't make one a writer of fiction. Education alone will not suffice, though I have had people say to me, "He should be able to write stories, he is so highly educated." It is to laugh. I say that the man with the gift or knack for writing fiction will turn out a writer in the end if he applies himself, regardless of schools and books teaching the method and art.

In this town is a woman, very highly educated, who studied two years in the classes of Dr. —— at Columbia. She has tried time and again to sell stories she has written, but up to date without success. From time to time I have had people come to me for information on the business of writing. The first thing I ask for is some of their stuff. Not an editor in the country would print such truck. This is rather unseemly in one who himself turns out a great deal of worthless truck, but I can see the faults of others better than my own. I can't see my own at all.

The best text books on the subject are to be found on the news-stands—Adventure, American, Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, etc. These should come first because they show the finished product of people who are actually succeeding at what the student aspires to do. It is the whole machine that can be taken down to learn how it was assembled in the first place.

Text-books, I think, are valuable to the student in proportion to their relationship to him. Are they really prepared for the student, or written because the author had certain views he wished to publish about a certain subject? I think they should suggest rather than dictate. The author should say, "Let's try this and see what happens," and not "Do this or you are damned." In short, I have found most text-books far too dictatorial.

Detailed laws and rules should be avoided. The student should get the general impression, but be left free to modify his performances to suit existing needs or to satisfy his individual point of view. Of course there are certain laws of story writing that preclude dispute by their very obviousness. I don't pay any more attention to the rules of story writing than I do to a fly on a Chinaman's nose in Canton.

It therefore galls me to have a text-book author tell me that I must do thus and so. All I want him to do is to give me the platform to stand on. I'll make and speak my own piece in my own way. If he is going to write and make my speech I'll step down.

William Wells: No.

Ben Ames Williams: I've never taken any "course" in story writing. I once read a book on it. It helped me not at all. The books that have helped me most in the technical work of writing are books of criticism. Any of the standard works.

Honore Willsie: Neither.

H. C. Witwer: I have never had any course of any kind in short story writing, or, I should say, in writing. Nor have I read or studied books on the art, gift, trade, profession, crime, or whatever it may be. I have about me at all times as working tools, a dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, Shakespeare, Encylopedia Brittanica, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Find all invaluable.

William Almon Wolff: No courses at all. The best book I know is not about narrative fiction at all—it's William Archer's Play Making. That has been and remains, invaluable to me. I think, incidentally, that it's helpful to think of a story in "scenes."

Edgar Young: No classroom course. Wrote several stories before I ever knew there was such a thing as a book on the subject. Must have learned something by reading current magazines but was where I couldn't get them for years when in South America. Since being here in New York have read many of the books concerning writing.

Summary

Of 113 answering, 55 have used neither class, course or book, 56 have tried one or more of these, and 2, saying only that they took no course, are probably to be included with those having tried none of the three.

Of the 56 who have tried one or more of the three, 40 give definite reply as to whether, in the elementary stages, they derived benefit, as follows: much benefit, 6; benefit, 4; some benefit, 5; total 15. No benefit, 11; some harm, 1; harm, 2; much harm, 1; total, 15. There are 10 who state they derived "little benefit" and this presumably is to be taken as a negative answer. In any case, out of 40 there are 25 who derived little or no benefit in the elementary stages of learning their art, and 4 of the 25 state that they derived actual harm instead of benefit.

Add the fact that if the remaining 16 of the 56 who have used one or more of the three derived any benefit they did not take the trouble to say so, which would indicate that, if there were any benefit at all, it was not a considerable one. Add the additional damning fact that of the 113 answering the general question 55 (probably 57) have not found it necessary to success to use any of the three. Out of 113 writers only 15 claim any benefit, in even the elementary stages, from classes, courses or books purporting to teach the writing of fiction! Ninety-eight against fifteen!

That testimony fills me with joy. Yes, I've written a book myself on fiction writing, but it had not been published when this questionnaire was answered, it was written largely as an earnest protest against present methods of teaching fiction and a chief purpose of this questionnaire and of this present book giving its results was to get proof in facts from a final source that present teaching methods, as practised in all but a tiny handful of cases, are badly in need of revolutionary revision.

My feeling in the matter was not due to theorizing. For twenty years my life-business has been the handling of the results of those methods as they pour in in the form of submitted manuscripts across the editorial desk. For twenty years it has been my business to deal with the authors and would-be authors who write those manuscripts, to try to find their strong points and their weak points and to ferret out the causes and the remedies. They have worked with me to this end and have talked frankly. Even if there had been only the manuscripts themselves to look at, it would have been evident enough that there was some general cause, other than the writers' inabilities, for the wide-spread and persistent weaknesses that were making most of those manuscripts unavailable or at least far below the standards possible to their authors.

If only half of our 113 successful writers have been touched by these methods, remember that the successful writers are only some ten per cent. of those who write and that the remaining ninety per cent. are more prone to turn to formal books and teaching. The man or woman with pronounced native ability is more likely to hew his own way or go to first courses, particularly after examining the outside helps available. Do not forget, too, that these prevalent weaknesses in manuscripts are due not only to positive faults in teaching methods, but to the lack of really helpful, constructive advice and guiding.

A chief bad result of these teaching methods will be taken up in our consideration of the question on the value of technique. To take up all the bad results in detail would fill more space than the nature of this volume warrants its devoting to the subject.

While only 15 derived benefit from these methods in the elementary stages, still fewer—10—found benefit in the more advanced stages. One might expect the falling off to be still more pronounced until one remembers that these books and courses, whatever their general faults, do cover a vast number of specific points and that in the discussion of these points a writer who has already built his own foundations can often find suggestion and information of decided value to him without suffering from the general faults. None of our answerers reports harm, in advanced stages, from these methods and none reports failure to get benefit in the advanced stages specifically, though many simply give a "no" to the general question of benefit.

Considering class, course and book separately, of 13 reporting definitely on class experience 7 state benefit of varying degree in elementary stages, though one of these expresses doubt; 1, "little"; 4, none, 1 of these reporting harm. Only one reports on advanced stages—no benefit.

On correspondence courses, 8 state experience; 3, benefit; 1, probably some; 1, "little"; 3, none. This as to elementary stages. On advanced stages only 1 reports—some benefit.

On books 40 report. On elementary stages, 35; benefit, 14; possibly, 1; little, 10; no benefit, 7; harm, 3. On advanced stages, 10, including some of the 35 reporting also on elementary stages; benefit, 3; little, 3; no benefit, 4.

Tabulating negatively, 78 of the 113 specifically report no class experience; 73 no correspondence course; 47 no book. As already stated, 55—or 57—make a blanket report of using none of the three.

Unfortunately the questionnaire did not include a specific question on benefit derived from magazines devoted to writers and their art. In spite of this omission three or four voluntarily reported benefit therefrom in elementary stages and no one volunteered to report harm or lack of benefit. If reports had been asked for on these magazines, I believe it would have been far more favorable than on books, classes or courses.

These magazines use many articles by writers telling their own experiences, difficulties, solutions. The people best equipped to teach others are those who have themselves learned how—who have accomplished, not merely theorized. Each is handicapped as a teacher by the facts that his methods and principles are naturally those he has found best adapted to his own individual case, that the needs of no two individuals are exactly alike and that his methods may be for some others altogether useless or even harmful. But in these magazines where many writers are heard from these very differences appear and the intelligent reader can pick and choose with profit. Most of all, he learns that no one rule applies to all writers alike.

QUESTION VI

How much of your craft have you learned from reading current authors? The classics?

Answers

Bill Adams: I have to admit that I know no current authors—I never read a magazine story, and exceedingly seldom a book. Used to read a great deal twenty to twenty-five years ago.

Samuel Hopkins Adams: How can one tell? I might guess at half and half.

Paul L. Anderson: Mostly the classics: that's one reason I haven't sold more stuff—too old-fashioned.

William Ashley Anderson: Not much—if any—from current writers, with a few isolated examples—except for those who have already become standard: Kipling, and authors of similar standing in various countries. I believe strongly in the classics and regret very much that they were not very deeply ingrained in me when I was at school, as they were fundamental in literature. I believe just as strongly in the standard works of literature. But I believe a professional author wastes time reading current authors, unless the work has distinct and special merit and is brought to his attention.

H. C. Bailey: I should put the classics (using the word in the widest sense, say from Homer and the Bible to Maupassant and Mark Twain) first. Good models are of any time and all time. From good models living and dead and what I know of their methods I learned any craftsmanship I have.

Edwin Balmer: When I began writing I considered Kipling and Richard Harding Davis and Sophocles about the best writers in the world. I had taken a great deal of Greek in college and took an M. A. at Harvard in Greek and when I finished I could read classical Greek almost as readily as English. I remember consciously admiring and trying to put into my writing some of the sense of quantity which the Greeks used. The first story I ever sold to a magazine was certainly strongly influenced in its wording by Greek models. I still think Greek literature second to none.

Ralph Henry Barbour: Who knows the answer to this question? Not I!

Frederick Orin Bartlett: I have absorbed, rather than learned, a great deal from current authors—especially English authors. The classics I feel to be an invaluable background—a background that too many American authors lack.

Nalbro Bartley: From the classics, I think I have learned much—also from the daily newspapers but not from current authors.

Konrad Bercovici: Reading current authors I have learned what not to do. I have only learned something about writing from the Bible, a little more from Balzac, and if writing were a trade and I were a young man, I should apprentice myself now to Anatole France.

Ferdinand Berthoud: None. Don't read current authors. Have never read the classics. I wrote my first story for my own amusement and without knowing that it was a story, and without any single thought of how other people wrote.

H. H. Birney, Jr.: Can't honestly say I've gained a great deal from either. Try to read current authors to learn, if possible, the secret of just how they "put it over." Have read most of the "classics" and have doubtless, though unconsciously, benefitted from them.

Farnham Bishop: I've read everything from Diamond Dick to Marcus Aurelius, beginning early and sitting up late, mixing my reading till now it is utterly hopeless for me to disentangle the results and reactions. There are huge gaps in it, and some rather odd specializations. How much have I learned from Homer and Vergil, and how much from Kipling and Conan Doyle? Blessed if I know the exact proportions! But I think that varying your reading is a safeguard against writing pseudo-Kiplingese and diluted O. Henry.

Algernon Blackwood: None. I read little fiction. As a boy I missed the classics, and have only made up a little of this leeway since. I never read a story without feeling how completely otherwise my own treatment of his idea would have been—probably, that is, how much better his treatment is than mine.

Max Bonter: Whatever I may have learned from contemporaries has been acquired unconsciously and without design.

I studied Milton intensively with the idea of letting some of his wonderful construction sink into me—particularly the first two books of Paradise Lost. Have never regretted the time so spent.

Katharine Holland Brown: Hard to answer. Reared on the classics,—by the simple device of keeping them on the top shelves, with the grave command, "Not to be read till you grow up." Will admit to an extreme preference for the most recent of the current fiction.

F. R. Buckley: Hard to say how much I got from classics and so on. A great deal. Rough guess—should say Rudyard Kipling and an English author named Neil Lyons were my best teachers.

Prosper Buranelli: Reading current literature does nothing but harm. Read Sophocles.

Thompson Burtis: I should say that all the superficialities of the craft I have learned from current authors. Fundamentals, such as vocabulary and characterization, I believe I learned from the classics. As a young and green writer, I believe I am picking up tricks of the trade constantly from my contemporaries.

George M. A. Cain: How much I owe to reading current or classic authors I have not the slightest idea. I have not consciously studied the work in half a dozen stories. And I have not, within my memory, read a story without a certain critical attitude which unconsciously noted its structural features. For all the readiness with which my mind conjures settings for what I read, I don't think I have ever read anything without constant consciousness of the man who wrote it, or ever forgotten to watch the writing. Though I was late in putting my efforts to actual use, my desire to write fiction goes back of my memory. At twelve years of age I was habitually putting into words every emotion and situation and scene I saw, experienced or felt. I shall never know in this world to what degree that has reacted upon me to make me everlastingly the actor of what I imagined I should be rather than the natural doer of what I was. Perhaps I should put it that the expression of things has always assumed entirely undue importance. In that attitude, I have unconsciously studied everything I have read. And here I might mention that, for me, the greatest difficulty of the relation between reading and writing is the avoidance of unconscious imitation. I can not read ten pages of Addison or Irving, still less of Gibbon or Macaulay, without having my writing run into sonorous cadences that frequently are as out of place as a Gregorian hymn-tune for a coon-song's words. Writers of striking idiosyncrasy, like O. Henry, or Samuel Blythe in his humorous sketches, Wodehouse, or Harry Leon Wilson, or anything in slang or dialect, are completely fatal to the straightaway putting of what I want to say which is my only notion of a style of my own.

Robert V. Carr: I might imagine some writer helped me, when he merely salved my prejudice or put into words certain racial memories that harmonized with mine.

George L. Catton: Consciously, little. Subconsciously, it is hard to say; perhaps all of it. From the classics, ancient classics, none. Never had the patience to wade through a lot of explanatory matter and minute detail I found in the so-called classics—to get at a fact or truth that could have been put in one sentence to stand out in the clear. Classics? Not to my way of thinking! I don't have to be told one thing twenty different ways to get the guts of it. Classics? old-fashioned expositions of old-fashioned views and ideas, most of which have been exploded long ago.

Robert W. Chambers: Current authors, nothing. Classics, much.

Roy P. Churchill: Both are necessary. The classics for vocabulary. People and current writers for modern styles. One is as valuable as the other to me.

Carl Clausen: A great deal.

Courtney Ryley Cooper: None from current authors. A lot from the classics, all devoured by the time I was sixteen. I had read everything from Dickens to Gautier by that time.

Arthur Crabb: I think I have learned very little from reading current authors, if you mean by current authors the average writer for the popular magazines. I used to read a great many stories, but of late years have practically stopped doing it. I have read and am reading constantly classics, if by that you mean great books written in the last three or four hundred years. I think that one of the reasons I am not more successful is that I try to write, as I see it, along the lines of the great novelists and haven't the goods. If I aimed at a less pretentious mark I would probably do a great deal better.

Mary Stewart Cutting: I have read everything classic and current that I could lay my hands on from the age of six.

Elmer Davis: Haven't learned it.

William Harper Dean: My work is influenced greatly from reading current authors. Little through the classics, unless you include Dickens among the latter. From him I have absorbed an invaluable conception of what the true meaning of atmosphere is, the weight of the short sentence and the power of the long one. But I am inspired in many ways when I read Hall Caine or Hutchinson or Hamsun or Conrad. I aspire to the easy, forceful style of Hutchinson, I want to be able to handle my characters with that charming grace which characterizes Conrad.

Harris Dickson: I read spasmodically current fiction, browse among the classics and naturally pick up ideas. These pick-ups are not, as a rule, conscious. Things just soak in, as water soaks into the ground and a spring comes out somewhere else.

Captain Dingle: Impossible for me to say. If I have learned from anybody it has been unconsciously. Had I taken a master, I suspect I might have got farther.

Louis Dodge: I get enthusiasm from reading current authors and the classics; but I try to find my own stories among people and tell them in my own way. To me a good book is like a preacher (the "ungracious pastor" of Shakespeare): it says to me "be good"—but it doesn't show me how.

J. Allan Dunn: I don't know. Don't believe much until I had myself acquired a certain amount of technique and could recognize the cleverness of others.

Phyllis Duganne: I've learned a great deal from reading current authors. It's interesting to read a story and like it, and then pick it to pieces to see how its writer made me feel as he did, how he made scenes so vivid and people so real, how he took an ancient plot and made it worth reading even when I knew after the first paragraph what the end would be. And it's instructive. And I suppose the same thing holds more or less in the classics. I'm much more interested in the modern school, so far as my own work is concerned.

Walter A. Dyer: I have read studiously both modern authors and the classics, and have got more inspiration from the latter.

Walter Richard Eaton: Nobody can say for me, I'd answer. One learns much of his "craft" (in both senses!) from a study of his market, the magazines. That is, he adapts the size (length) of his story, etc., to the editorial demands.

E. O. Foster: I have been an "omnivorous reader" all my life, the dictionary and encyclopedia being my favorite works.

Arthur O. Friel: Nearly all from current writers.

J. U. Giesy: All of it except what I have worked out myself. Have been a somewhat omnivorous reader all my life.

George Gilbert: No author can answer that, for he does not know himself.

Kenneth Gilbert: Current authors have been very helpful; classics scarcely at all.

Holworthy Hall: If I have learned anything at all about any "craft," I have learned it from Leonard Merrick, Mary Rinehart and Theophile Gautier.

Richard Matthews Hallet: I've probably learned a lot from reading current authors. Couldn't quite say how or what; and people who read me may doubt the above proposition. The danger of watching the tricks of a contemporary consists in liability to ape him in your own stuff, especially if he is a powerful contemporary. We have with us all the time young shadow-forms of Kipling, O. Henry, etc. I dogged Conrad nearly to my undoing. A man with some writing instinct can pick up the mannerisms of another writer as easily as butter absorbs a taint. The danger from reading the classics is less, and such reading is probably worth more to a man.

William H. Hamby: Not consciously from either: although I know I must have benefited from both, especially modern writers.

A. Judson Hanna: I can not say that reading the classics has helped me to write a story which will sell to an American magazine. I have received much valuable help by reading current authors. For instance, a story appearing in —— has passed the test. By studying it I get an idea of what makes a short story. However, the most help I have ever received I gained from criticisms, by magazine editors, of rejected stories.

Joseph Mills Hanson: It seems to me difficult to estimate how much of one's craftmanship in writing has been gained from reading the work of others and how much from his own impelling instincts and impulses. If he feels the necessity of expressing himself in writing, his natural abilities and limitations in narration probably govern his craftsmanship in greater degree than any reading. I believe, however, that my own style has been influenced at different times by different writers who aroused my admiration, both current authors and classic ones. Such influence I think is detrimental to one's individual style and should be guarded against. Even a poor individual style is better than a poor imitation of another's style. But the general effect of reading good authors can not but be elevating and improving to one's own imagination and narrative ability.

E. E. Harriman: Have developed more disgust than delight in reading current authors, because I find so much that is rotten-incorrect-ridiculous and out of reason in them. For instance —— —— telling us that when on skiis, crossing snow five feet deep, he found a bird sitting on its eggs in a nest. And —— —— giving a grizzly bear a round track.

The classics help me most. For clearness in composition—Shakespeare and the Bible. Drummond's poems aid me. Being foolish enough to do some versifying myself helps me in prose writing.

Nevil G. Henshaw: I've got a lot from both, possibly more from current authors.

Joseph Hergesheimer: All my early and important reading was in the English lyrical poets.

Robert Hichens: I have learned, I think, a great deal by reading certain authors, but not current authors. A book that has helped me is Tolstoy's Author's Art.

R. de S. Horn: After the beginner has got the fundamentals of writing straight in his mind the greatest assistance he can get anywhere is from reading current authors and the classics. The classics show him the art at its highest form: the models of technique. The current authors show him the popular style and the trend of the times. Neither one should be studied to the exclusion of the other. A fifty-fifty ration is best, I think.

Clyde B. Hough: "How much of your craft have you learned from reading current authors?" Absolutely all that I know. "From the classics?" None. I don't strive to write classics, so why study them? The classics of today, most of them, were not considered classics when they were written. And the good human stories of to-day will be the classics of to-morrow.

Emerson Hough: I hope I never imitated any current author. Could not any classic.

A. S. M. Hutchinson: I don't know; but I think wide reading (not necessarily, or even at all, fiction) is necessary to good writing.

Inez Haynes Irwin: I do not think I have gained anything technically from reading the classics—with the exception of the Elizabethan dramatists. And I can not say exactly that they helped me technically—they delighted, thrilled and inspired me. I suppose, to be perfectly fair, I ought to say that the Russian novelists, who also dominated my girlhood, gave me my taste for realism. I have learned more than I can tell from the work of my contemporaries. When I was at Radcliffe College, following I think the example of Stevenson, my Harvard instructor had the class write themes in imitation of the Bible, Dryden, Walton, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, etc., etc. I believe now it would have had infinitely more value if we had been studying the short stories which were appearing in McClure's Magazine at that period—a great period in American short-story writing. I can not overestimate how much I have gained from the short fiction of such writers as O'Henry, Percival Gibbons, Edna Ferber, Fanny Hurst, Joseph Hergesheimer, Willa Cather, and of course Henry James and Joseph Conrad.

Will Irwin: I suppose that I have learned a great deal of my craft from both current authors and the classics. How much, it would be hard to say. One absorbs such training unconsciously.

Charles Tenney Jackson: As to "current authors and the classics" I read the former very little; and the latter seem to be part of a past curiosity which left me with a certain vague, large respect much as you would give to a ninth-century cathedral or a tapestry. I reckon they did their durndest in their time, but I could wish that some Athenian philosopher had stopped a moment to record what he ate for breakfast, how the family wash was handled, what he shaved with ... all about the life about him, in fact; the picture, the color, the motives of folk about him. My imagination turns from the temples to what possibly housed the cobbler who mended Caesar's sandals, and where his children played. The guesses of the classic writers as to the riddle of life are not of interest, for I have my own; but I would like to know the flavor of the common life about them.

Frederick J. Jackson: I can't say how much technique I have learned from reading current authors. The classics is an easier question. The answer is about nothing, net, plus war tax.

Mary Johnston: I do not know.

John Joseph: Have been a tremendous reader and student of both current and classic literature, and if I know anything at all about writing I must have picked it up in this manner.

Lloyd Kohler: I think that it's safe to say that I've learned a good half of my craft from reading and studying current authors and the classics. There is a danger in this, especially if one follows a certain current author too closely. It's best to read them all. As to the classics, there is little danger of ever getting too much of them—I'd venture that the average of us don't get enough of the classics. I know that I don't.

Harold Lamb: Current authors, no. I read them very little as a boy, and hardly at all as an author. The classics, yes, if you let me name my own classics.

They were my friends. They still are my friends. I refer to the coterie gathered together in the libraries of my grandfather and uncle. Messrs. Gustave Doré, Æsop, the Nibelungs, Roland and Oliver—the Song, you know—Pierrot, Prince of Tatary, The Apostles, Dante in Purgatory, Plato, Rider Haggard, Napoleon, Don Quixote de la Mancha (but Sancho Panza was a better chum). A host of others. But these had the finest pictures—an artist's library, and a poet's. So they were my earliest friends. I had others. Especially Francois Villon, Catullus, Henry, Babur, Li Po, Macdonald, Robert Burns.

Sinclair Lewis: I don't know.

Hapsburg Liebe: Since I never had any schooling, I guess I learned the little I know from reading, both modern authors and classics—I haven't read enough of the classics; they seem wordy to me. The average magazine, I guess, wouldn't buy or publish half the classics now if they were new.

Romaine H. Lowdermilk: Can't say. More from current authors, anyway.

Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Can't say, but doubtless I've learned a great deal from reading current authors (for technique in current fiction) and from the classics for the basic fundamentals.

Rose Macaulay: A great deal.

Crittenden Marriott: Mighty little.

Homer I. McEldowney: Thus far, I should say that current authors have had more influence upon my writing than have the classics, due to the fact that I read rather for amusement than for any lasting good which I might derive.

Ray McGillivray: In so far as any one must be blamed, I believe the classics—if you'll stretch the definition to include also Nick Carter, Old Sleuth and the Dalton Boys—are responsible. I set the onus of responsibility at the door of my own general cussedness, the trait which makes me lay off any labor any time a bunch of good pals takes a notion to drift from here to helangon, taking as equipment a deck of cards, a few well-hidden quarts, a couple of rifles and shotguns, a camera and some merry songs of the road as cargo for the old gas-buggy. Such a guy must write; it's about the only excuse he's got to live—except the living, which is joy.

Helen Topping Miller: I read all the classics when I was very young. How much of my ability to write I owe to those early associations I am not able to judge. Of late I have naturally studied the craft of successful current authors. From modern novels I do not feel that I gain anything; indeed it is very rarely that I am able to finish a book without being dismally bored. On the other hand, scientific and historical works, especially ancient history and religious history, fascinate me. Travel also forms a large part of my reading.

Thomas Samson Miller: Impossible to say how much I am indebted to current authors and the classics. This is all subjective.

Anne Shannon Monroe: I do not read many current authors—haven't the time. I know many are good and I miss a great deal, but out on our coast we just have twenty-four hours a day, the same as in New York, and some of them must be spent in the open, when the open is such an enchanting wonderland. I read the classics in school-days—had bookish parents who drove them down our throats—but not since.

L. M. Montgomery: I think I owe considerable to my greedy reading and rereading of standard fiction—the old masters—Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Hawthorne. Occasionally, too, a well-written modern magazine story has been helpful and illuminating. But, as a rule, I think aspiring authors will not reap much benefit from current fiction—except perhaps from a purely commercial point of view in finding out what kind of stories certain magazines take! Most writers, except those of absolute genius, are prone to unconscious imitation of what they read and that is a bad thing.