---------------------------------------- ------------ ,transcriber's note ,minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice4 ,the author's spelling has been maintained4 ---------------------------------------- ------------ ,,if ,,you ,,don',t ,,write ,,fiction ,by ,,charles ,,phelps ,,cushing ,illustration ,,new ,,york ,,robert ,m4 ,mc,b,r,i,d,e ,,company #aibj ,copyright1 #aibj1 by ,,robert ,m4 ,mc,b,r,i,d,e ,,co4 ,printed in the ,united ,states of ,america ,published4 ,june1 #aibj ,,to ,,cousin ,,ann who doesn't write fiction1 but who is ambitious to market magazine articles1 this little book is affectionately dedicated4 ,if it can save her some tribulations along the road that leads to acceptances1 the author will feel that his labors have been well enough repaid4 ,the author thanks the editors of ,the ,bookman1 ,outing and the ,kansas ,city ,star for granting permission to reprint certain passages that here appear in revised form4 ,c4 ,p4 ,c4 ,,preface ,the publisher assures me that no one but a book reviewer ever reads prefaces1 so ,i seize upon the opportunity to have a tete-a-tete with my critics4 ,gentlemen1 my cards are face up on the table4 ,i have declared to the publisher that nearly every ,american who knows how to read longs to find his way into print1 and should appreciate some of the dearly bought hints herein contained upon practical journalism4 ,and1 as ,i kept my face straight when ,i said it1 he may have taken me seriously4 ,perhaps he thinks he has a best seller4 ,but this is just between ourselves4 ,as he never reads prefaces1 he won't suspect unless you tell him4 ,my own view of the matter is that ,harold ,bell ,wright need not fear me1 but that the editors of the ,baseball ,rule ,book may be forced to double their annual appropriation for advertising in the literary sections4 ,as the sport of free lance scribbling has a great deal in common with fishing1 the author of this little book may be forgiven for suggesting that in intention it is something like ,izaak ,walton's ,compleat ,angler1 in that it attempts to combine practical helpfulness with a narrative of mild adventures4 ,for what the book contains besides advice1 ,i make no apologies1 for it is set down neither in embarrassment nor in pride4 ,many readers there must be who would like nothing better than to dip into chapters from just such a life as mine4 ,witness how ,edward ,fitz,gerald1 half author of the ,rubaiyat1 sighed to read more lives of obscure persons1 and that ,arthur ,christopher ,benson1 from his ,college ,window1 repeats the wish and adds3 ,the worst of it is that people often are so modest2 they think that their own experience is so dull1 so unromantic1 so uninteresting4 ,it is an entire mistake4 ,if the dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life1 about work1 love1 religion and emotion1 it would be a fascinating document4 ,but1 you may protest1 by what right do the experiences of a magazine free lance pass as adventures8 ,then1 again1 ,i shall have to introduce expert testimony3 ,the literary life1 says no less an authority than ,h4 ,g4 ,wells1 is one of the modern forms of adventure4 ,and this holds as true for the least of scribblers as it does for great authors4 ,while the writer whose work excites wide interest is seeing the world and meeting1 as ,mr4 ,wells lists them1 philosophers1 scientific men1 soldiers1 artists1 professional men1 politicians of all sorts1 the rich1 the great1 you may behold journalism's small fry courageously sallying forth to hunt editorial lions with little butterfly nets4 ,the sport requires a firm jaw and demands that the adventurer keep all his wits about him4 ,any novice who doubts me may have a try at it himself and see6 ,but first he had better read this ,compleat ,free ,lancer4 ,its practical hints may save him--or should ,i say her8--many a needless disappointment4 ,c4 ,p4 ,c4 ,,contents ,,chapter ,,page ,,preface v ,i4 ,,about ,,noses ,,and ,,jaws #a ,,ii4 ,,how ,,to ,,prepare ,a ,,manuscript #aj ,,iii4 ,,how ,,to ,,take ,,photographs #af ,,iv4 ,,finding ,a ,,market #be ,v4 ,a ,,beginner',s ,,first ,,adventures #cb ,,vi4 ,,in ,,new ,,york',s ,,fleet ,,street #dc ,,vii4 ,,something ,,to ,,sell #ed ,,viii4 ,,what ,,the ,,editor ,,wants #fa ,,ix4 ,,and ,,if ,,you ,,do-- #gb ,x4 ,,forever ,,at ,,the ,,crossroads #gi ,,if ,,you ,,don',t ,,write ,,fiction ,,chapter ,i ,,about ,,noses ,,and ,,jaws ,a foxhound scents the trail of his game and tracks it straight to a killing4 ,a lapdog lacks this capability4 ,in the same way1 there are breeds of would-be writers who never can acquire a nose for news1 and others who1 from the first day that they set foot in editorial rooms1 are hot on the trail that leads to billboard headlines on the front page of a newspaper or acceptances from the big magazines4 ,many writers who are hopelessly clumsy with words draw fat pay checks because they have a faculty for smelling out interesting facts4 ,in the larger cities there are reporters with keen noses for news who never write a line from one year's end to another1 but do all of their work by word of mouth over the telephone4 ,to the beginner such facts as these seem to indicate that any one can win in journalism who has the proper kind of nose4 ,this conclusion is only a half-truth1 but it is good for the novice to learn--and as soon as possible--that the first requisite toward landing in the newspapers and magazines is to know a story when he sees one4 ,in the slang of the newspaper shop a story means non-fiction4 ,it may be an interview4 ,it may be an account of a fire4 ,it may be a page of descriptive writing for the ,sunday magazine section4 ,it may be merely a piece of human interest4 ,as my own experience in journalism covers barely fifteen years1 the writer would not be bold enough to attempt to define a story further than to state that it is something in which an editor hopes his public will be interested at the time the paper or magazine appears upon the newsstands4 ,to-morrow morning or next month the same readers might not feel the slightest interest in the same type of contribution4 ,timeliness of some sort is important1 yet a story may have little to do with what in the narrower sense is usually thought of as news--such as this morning's happenings in the stock markets or the courts1 or the fire in ,main ,street4 ,the news interest in this restricted sense may dangle from a frayed thread4 ,the timeliness of the contribution may be vague and general4 ,we may not be able to do more than sense it4 ,this is one reason why men of academic minds1 who love exact definitions1 never feel quite at ease when they attempt to deal with the principles of journalism4 ,we practical men1 who earn a living as writers1 feel no more at ease than the college professors when we attempt to deal with these principles4 ,when we are cub reporters we are likely to conceive the notion that a story is anything startling enough1 far enough removed from the normal1 to catch public attention by its appeal to curiosity4 ,later1 we perceive that this explains only half of the case4 ,the other half may baffle us to the end4 ,instance the fact that a great many manuscripts sell to newspapers and magazines upon the merits of that mysterious element in writing known as human interest4 ,if a reward were offered for an identification of human interest no jury could agree upon the prize-winning description4 ,a human interest story sometimes slips past the trained nose of a reporter of twenty years' experience and is picked up by a cub4 ,it is something you tell by the scent4 ,this scent for the trail of a story may be sharpened by proper training1 and one of the best places for a beginner to acquire such training--and earn his living in the meantime--is in a newspaper office4 ,yet nothing could be further from the present writer's intention than to advise all beginners in journalism to apply for jobs as reporters4 ,some of the most successful magazine contributors in ,america have never set foot inside of a newspaper plant except to pay a subscription to the paper or to insert a want ad for a chauffeur or a butler4 ,if you have nose sense for what the public is eager to read1 newspaper experience can teach you nothing worth while unless it is a deeper knowledge of human nature4 ,as a reporter you will view from behind the scenes what the people of an ,american community are like and catch some fleeting glimpses of the more unusual happenings in their lives4 ,you may1 or may not1 emerge from this experience a better writer than you were when you went in4 ,your style may become simpler and more forceful by newspaper training4 ,or it may become tawdry1 sloppy and inane4 ,newspapers1 observed ,charles ,lamb1 always excite curiosity4 ,no one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment4 ,that was true a hundred years ago1 and appears to be just as true to-day4 ,fortunately1 the men who write the news get more out of the work than do their readers4 ,the reporter usually can set down only a fraction of the interesting facts that he picks up about a story4 ,his work may be eternally disappointing to the public1 but it is rarely half so dull to the man who does the writing4 ,no life into which the average modern can dip is so rich in interest for the first year or two as that of the reporter working upon general assignments4 ,a fling at hobo life1 ten voyages at sea and more than two years of army life 7a year and a half of this time spent in trekking all over the shattered landscape of ,france7 do not shake my conviction that the adventurer most to be envied in our times is the cub reporter enjoying the first thrills and glamors of breaking into print4 ,there is a scent in the air1 which1 though it be only ink and paper1 makes the cub's blood course faster the minute he steps into the office corridor2 and as he mounts the stairs to the local room the throbbing of the presses makes him wonder if this is not literally the heart of the city4 ,he makes his rounds of undertakers' shops1 courtrooms1 army and navy recruiting offices1 railway stations1 jails1 markets1 clubs1 police and fire headquarters4 ,he is sent to picnics and scenes of murders4 ,he is one of the greenest of novices in literary adventure1 but1 quite like an ,h4 ,g4 ,wells1 he meets in his community philosophers1 scientific men1 soldiers1 artists1 professional men1 politicians of all sorts1 the rich1 the great4 ,he is underpaid and overworked4 ,he has no time to give his writings literary finish2 and1 in the end1 unless he develops either into a specialist or an executive1 he may wear himself out in hard service and be cast upon the scrap heap4 ,at first1 the life is rich and varied4 ,then1 after a while1 the reporter finds his interest growing jaded4 ,the same kind of assignment card keeps cropping up for him1 day after day4 ,he perceives that he is in a rut4 ,he tells himself3 ,i've written that same story half a dozen times before4 ,then is the time for him to settle himself to do some serious thinking about his future4 ,does he have it in him to become an executive8 ,or does he discover a special taste1 worth cultivating1 for finance1 or sport1 or editorial writing8 ,if so1 he has something like a future in the newspaper office4 ,but if what he really longs to do is to contribute to the magazines or to write books1 he is at the parting of the ways4 ,he should seize now upon every opportunity to discover topics of wide interest1 and in his spare time he should attempt to write articles on these topics and ship them off to market4 ,he has laid the first solid foundation of successful freelancing1 for if he has been able to survive as long as six months in the competition of the local room he has a nose for what constitutes a story4 ,the next thing he has to learn is that an article for a magazine differs chiefly from a newspaper story in that the magazine must make a wider appeal--to a national rather than to a local interest4 ,the successful magazine writer is simply a reporter who knows what the general public likes to read1 and who has learned when and where and how to market what he produces4 ,timeliness is as important as ever1 so he must look to his tenses4 ,the magazine article will not appear until from ten days to six months or more after it is accepted4 ,some of our magazines begin making up their ,christmas numbers in ,july1 so he must learn to sweat to the tinkle of sleigh bells4 ,i wonder how many hundreds of ambitious newspaper reporters are at this very minute urging themselves to extra effort after hours and on their precious holidays and ,sundays to test their luck in the magazine markets8 ,the number must be considerable if my experience as a member of the editorial staff of a big national magazine allows me to make a surmise4 ,i have read through bushels of manuscripts that had the ear marks of the newspaper office all over them4 ,they were typed on the cheap kind of copy paper that is used only in city rooms4 ,the first sheet rarely had a title1 for the newspaper reporter's habit is to leave headline writing to a copy reader4 ,ink and dust had filled in such letters as a and e and o4 ,most of the manuscripts were done with characteristic newspaper office haste1 and gave indication somewhere in the text that the author had not the faintest notion of how far in advance of the date line the magazine had to make up its table of contents4 ,many of these novices showed a promise in skill that might give some uneasy moments to our most prosperous magazine headliners4 ,if only there were firm jaws back of the promise6 ,these men had the nose for journalistic success1 but that alone will not carry them far unless it is backed with a fighting jaw4 ,i look back sometimes to cub days and name over the reporters who at that time showed the greatest ability4 ,three of the most brilliant are still drudging along in the old shop on general assignments1 for little more money than they made ten years ago4 ,one did a book of real merit and the effort he expended upon it overcame him with ennui4 ,another made the mistake of supposing that he could pin ,john ,barleycorn's shoulders to the mat4 ,another had no initiative4 ,he is dying in his tracks4 ,who now are rated as successes on the roll call of those cub reporter days8 ,not our geniuses1 but a dozen fellows who had the most determination and perseverance4 ,the men who won were the men who tried1 and tried again and then kept on trying4 ,mr4 ,dooley was quite right about opportunity3 ,opporchunity knocks at every man's dure wanst4 ,on some men's dures it hammers till it breaks down the dure and goes in an' wakes him up if he's asleep1 an' aftherward it works fur him as a night watchman4 ,on other men's dures it knocks an' runs away2 an' on the dures of other men it knocks1 an' whin they come out it hits thim over the head with an ax4 ,but eviry wan has an opporchunity4 ,so yez had better kape your eye skinned an' nab it before it shlips by an' is lost forevir4 ,the names on a big magazine's table of contents represent many varieties of the vicissitudes of fortune1 but the prevailing type is not a lucky genius1 one for whom ,opporchunity is working as a night watchman4 ,the type is a firm-jawed plugger4 ,his nose is keen for good stories1 his eye equally alert to dodge the ax or to nab ,opporchunity's fleeting coat-tails4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,how ,,to ,,prepare ,a ,,manuscript ,if you have a real story up your sleeve and know how to word it in passable ,english1 the next thing to learn is the way to prepare a manuscript in professional form for marketing4 ,in the non-fiction writer's workshop only two machines are essential to efficiency and economy4 ,the first of these1 and absolutely indispensable1 is a typewriter4 ,the sooner you learn to type your manuscripts1 the better for your future and your pocketbook4 ,it is folly to submit contributions in handwriting to a busy editor who has to read through a bushel of manuscripts a day4 ,the more legible the manuscript1 the better are your chances to win a fair reading4 ,i will go further1 and declare that a manuscript which has all the earmarks of being by a professional is not only more carefully read1 but also is likely to be treated with more consideration when a decision is to be made upon its value to the publisher in dollars and cents4 ,put yourself in the editor's place and you will quickly enough grasp the psychology of this4 ,the editor knows that no professional submits manuscripts in handwriting1 that no professional writes upon both sides of the sheet1 and that no professional omits to enclose an addressed stamped envelope in which to return the manuscript to its author if it proves unavailable for the magazine's use4 ,why brand yourself as a novice even before the manuscript reader has seen your first sentence8 ,remember you are competing for editorial attention against a whole bushel of other manuscripts4 ,the girl who opens the magazine's mail may be tempted to cast your contribution into the rejection basket on general principles1 if you are foolish enough to get away to such a poor start4 ,what an ignominious end to your literary adventure is this--and all because you were careless1 or didn't know any better6 ,the writer who really means business will not neglect in any detail the psychology of making his manuscript invite a thorough reading4 ,it may be bad form to accept a dinner invitation in typewriting1 but it is infinitely worse form to fail to typewrite an invitation to editorial eyes to buy your manuscript4 ,good form also dictates that the first page of your contribution should bear in the upper left hand corner of the sheet your name1 upon the first line2 the street address1 on the second2 the town and state1 on the third4 ,in the upper right hand corner should be set down an estimate of the number of words contained in the manuscript4 ,leave a blank down to the middle of the page4 ,there1 in capitals1 write the title of the article2 then drop down a few lines and type your pen name 7if you use one7 or whatever version of your signature that you wish to have appear above the article when it comes out in print4 ,drop down a few more lines before you begin with the text1 and indent about an inch for the beginning of each paragraph4 ,here is a model for your guidance3 ,frank ,h4 ,jones1 about #cjjj #bdaf ,front ,st41 words ,oswego1 ,ohio ,,camping ,,on ,,indian ,,creek ,by ,frank ,henry ,jones ,it took us two minutes by the clock to pack everything we needed--and more1 for the camper-out always takes twice as much junk as he can use4 ,all that was left to do after that etc41 ,there are sound reasons for all this4 ,the first is that1 likely enough1 your title may not altogether suit the editor1 and he will require some of the white space in the upper part of the page for a revised version4 ,also1 he will need some space upon which to pencil his directions to the printers about how to set the type4 ,double space your lines4 ,if you leave no room between lines1 you make it extremely difficult for the editor to write in any corrections in the text4 ,moreover1 a solid mass of single-spaced typewriting is much harder to read than material that is double-spaced4 ,use good white paper1 of ordinary letter size1 eight by eleven inches1 and leave a margin of about an inch on either side of the text and at both top and bottom4 ,number each page4 ,don't write your copy with a ribbon which is too worn to be bright2 and1 while you are about it1 clean up those letters on the typebars that have a tendency to fill up with ink and dust4 ,you may have noticed1 for example1 that a1 e1 o1 s1 m1 and w are not always clear-cut upon the page4 ,you are doing all this to make the reading of your contribution as easy a task as possible from the purely physical side4 ,you are simply using a little common sense in the process of addressing yourself to the favorable attention of a force of extremely busy persons who are paid to wade through a formidable stack of mail4 ,if you have an overpowering distaste for doing your own typewriting1 you may hire a typist to turn your handwritten copy into something easier to read4 ,this procedure1 however1 may prove to be rather too costly for a beginner's purse4 ,it is the part of wisdom to learn to operate a machine yourself4 ,at first the task may seem rather a tough one1 but even after so short a time as a month of practice you are likely to be surprised at the progress you will make4 ,before long you will be able to write much faster upon a machine than with a pencil or a pen4 ,the danger then lies in a temptation to haste and carelessness4 ,this is one reason why many fastidious magazine writers always do the first draft of an article in longhand and turn to the typewriter only when they are ready to set down the final version4 ,temperament and habit should decide the matter4 ,nearly any one can learn to compose newspaper copy at the keyboard1 but not so many of us dare attempt to do magazine articles at the same high rate of speed4 ,particularly does this hold true of the first page of a magazine manuscript4 ,the opening paragraph of such a manuscript is likely to make a much more exacting demand upon the writer's skill than the lead of a newspaper story4 ,all that the newspaper usually demands is that the reporter cram the gist of his facts into the first few sentences4 ,the magazine insists that the first paragraph of a manuscript not only catch attention but also sound the keynote of many words to follow1 for the punch of the magazine story is more often near the end of the article than the beginning4 ,though the technique of newspaper and magazine writing may differ on this matter of the lead1 do not make the mistake of supposing that the magazine introduction need not be just as chock full of interest as the opening of a newspaper story4 ,you are no longer under any compulsion1 when you write for the magazines1 to cram the meat of the story into the first sentence1 but one thing you must do--you must rouse the reader to sit up and listen4 ,you can well afford to spend any amount of effort upon that opening paragraph4 ,write your lead a dozen times1 a hundred times1 if necessary1 until you make it rivet the attention4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,how ,,to ,,take ,,photographs ,after he has bought or rented a typewriter1 the would-be free lance in the non-fiction field has his workshop only half equipped4 ,one more machine is an urgent necessity4 ,get a camera4 ,few of our modern ,american newspapers and magazines are published without pictures2 so anybody ought to be able to perceive how absurd it is to submit an unillustrated manuscript to an illustrated periodical4 ,good photographs have won a market for many a manuscript that scarcely would have been given a reading if it had arrived without interesting pictures2 and many a well-written article has been reluctantly returned by the editor because no photographs were available to illustrate it4 ,there is only one way to dodge this issue4 ,just as you can hire a typist to put your manuscript into legible form1 you can pay a professional photographer to accompany you wherever you go and take the illustrations for your text4 ,but the same vital objection holds here as in the case of the professional typist--the costs will cut heavily into your profits4 ,with a little practice you can learn to do the work yourself4 ,after that1 you can operate at a small fraction of the expense of hiring a professional4 ,your work soon enough will be of as high a quality as anything that the average commercial photographer can produce1 and1 better yet1 it will not have any flat and stale commercial flavor about it4 ,nothing is more static and banal than the composition that the ordinary professional will produce if you fail to prevent him from having his own way4 ,ten to one1 all the lower half of the picture will be empty foreground1 and not a living creature will appear in the entire field of vision4 ,it cost the present writer upward of #aej to discover this fact4 ,then he bought a thirty dollar postcard kodak and a five dollar tripod and told the whole tribe of professionals to go to blazes4 ,the only time since then that he has ever had to hire commercial aid was when he had to have heavy flashlights made of large rooms4 ,so save yourself money now1 instead of eventually4 ,even if thirty dollars takes your last nickel1 don't hesitate4 ,for a beginning1 if you are inexperienced in photography1 rent a cheap machine with which to practice--a simple snapshot box with no adjustments on it will do while you are picking up the first inklings of how to compose a picture and of how much light is required for different classes of subjects4 ,after you have practiced with this for a while1 go out and buy a folding kodak4 ,if you have the journalistic eye for what is picturesque and newsy the camera will quickly return #ajj per cent4 upon the investment4 ,the one great difficulty for the beginner in photography is that he does not know how to time the exposure of a picture4 ,the books on photography are all too technical4 ,they discuss chemicals and printing papers and all the finer shadings of processes carried on in laboratories under a ruby light4 ,but what the novice longs to know is simply how to take pictures--what exposure to allow for a portrait1 what for a street scene1 what for a panorama4 ,he usually fails to give the portrait enough light1 and he gives the panorama too much4 ,he is willing to allow a professional finisher to do his developing and printing4 ,what the beginner wants to read is a chapter on exposure4 ,as an operator1 he is seeking for a rule of how and some examples of its application4 ,if you lack a simple working theory1 here is one now1 in primer terms3 ,the closer the object which you wish to photograph is to your lens1 the more light it requires2 the farther away it is1 the less light it requires4 ,this may sound somewhat unreasonable1 but that is how a camera works4 ,a portrait head1 or anything else that must be brought to within a few feet of the lens1 requires the greatest width of shutter aperture 7or1 what comes to the same thing1 the longest exposure72 and a far-away mountain peak or a cloud requires the smallest aperture 7or the shortest exposure74 ,to understand thoroughly what this means1 take off the back of your kodak and have a look at how the wheels go round4 ,set the pointer of the time dial on the face of your camera at ,t 7it means time exposure7 and then press the bulb 7or push the lever7 which opens the shutter4 ,looking through the back of your camera1 make the light come through the largest width of the lens4 ,you can do this by pushing the other pointer on the face of your kodak to the extreme left of its scale--the lowest number indicated4 ,on a kodak with a ,u4 ,s4 scale this number is #d4 ,you will see now that the light is coming through a hole nearly an inch in diameter4 ,if it were a bright day you could take portrait heads outdoors through this sized aperture with an exposure of one twenty-fifth of a second4 ,using this same amount of time1 the size of the shutter aperture should be reduced to a mere pin hole of light to make a proper exposure for far-away mountain tops1 clouds1 or boats in the open sea4 ,suppose we make our problem as simple as possible by leaving the timer at one twenty-fifth of a second for all classes of subjects4 ,we will vary only the size of the hole through which the light is to enter4 ,for a close-up1 a portrait head1 we operate with the light coming through the full width of the lens4 ,now push to the right one notch the pointer which reduces the size of the hole4 ,this makes the light come through a smaller diameter1 which on a ,u4 ,s4 scale will be marked #h4 ,only half as much light is coming through now as before4 ,this is the stop at which to take full length figures and many other views in which the foreground is unusually prominent4 ,buildings which are not light in color should also be taken with this stop4 ,in general1 it is for heavy foregrounds4 ,push the pointer on to #af4 ,if your scale is ,u4 ,s4 you will notice that this is midway between the largest and the smallest stops4 ,it is the happy medium stop at which1 on bright days1 you can properly expose for the great majority of your subjects1 those hundreds of scenes not close enough to the lens to be classified as heavy foregrounds nor yet far enough away to be panoramas4 ,buildings which are light in color and sunny street scenes fall into this division of exposures4 ,when in doubt1 take it at one twenty-fifth of a second with stop #af4 ,you can't miss it far1 one way or another4 ,push the pointer on to #cb and the object to be photographed ought to be at some distance away4 ,this is the stop for the open road and the sunlit fields--anything between an average view and a panorama4 ,at #fd the scale is set for the most distant of land views1 beach scenes and boats in the middle distance off-shore4 ,you will learn by costly overexposures that water views require much less light than landscapes4 ,photographers have an axiom that water is as bright as the sky itself4 ,so at #fd1 which is proper exposure for the most distant of land panoramas1 you begin to take waterscapes4 ,that tiniest pin hole of a stop1 at the extreme right of the scale1 is never to be used except for such subjects as the open sea and snowcapped mountain tops4 ,there you have the theory4 ,apply it with common sense and you will meet with few failures4 ,you scarcely need to be cautioned that if an object is dark in color it will require proportionately more exposure than the same object if it is white4 ,through various weathers and seasons1 experience will keep teaching you how to adapt the rule to changing conditions of light4 ,certain handbooks and exposure meters will be of service while you are learning the classifications of subjects4 ,you have been told how the rule works4 ,press the ,t bulb again to click your shutter shut and prepare to set out on a picture taking excursion4 ,set the time scale at one twenty-fifth of a second1 and leave it there4 ,load up a film4 ,replace the back of the camera4 ,take along a tripod4 ,don't forget that tripod6 ,with that you insure yourself against getting your composition askew1 or losing a good picture on account of a shaky hand4 ,suppose the expedition is gunning somewhere in the backwoods4 ,down the stony winding road saunters one of the natives in a two-piece suit4 ,overalls and a hickory shirt constitute his entire outfit4 ,he grows a beard to save himself the labor of shaving4 ,his leathery feet scarcely feel the sharp stones of the highway4 ,here is a picture worth preserving1 for the cracker type is becoming a rarity1 almost extinct4 ,set your pointer at #h and take his full length4 ,if you wish a close-up of his head1 set the pointer at #d4 ,a little farther and the road plunges into a shady valley4 ,under the trees ahead is a log cabin1 dappled with the sunlight and the shade of dancing leaves4 ,use your judgment about whether such a scene requires #h or #d4 ,if in doubt1 use #d1 for the danger here is that you may under-expose4 ,in a clearing where the shade of the trees has little effect1 stands an old water power mill4 ,it is simply an average view1 and you can safely snap it with a #af stop4 ,the friendly razorback hogs under the mail hack make a picture with a heavy foreground4 ,they fall into the #h classification--half in shade1 half in sunlight4 ,the road leads us at last to a river4 ,an old-fashioned ferry boat is making a crossing in midstream4 ,from the hilltop where we first survey it the scene is a landscape1 distant view1 and can be taken with a #cb4 ,but when you get down to the water's edge and shoot across the shining river1 beware of overexposure4 ,stop down another notch4 ,do you see now how the theory works8 ,give it a fair trial and you will agree that taking pictures--the mere taking1 with no bothering your head about developing1 printing1 toning and the like--is a matter no more baffling than the simple art of learning to punch the letters on the keyboard of a typewriter4 ,keep at it1 never neglecting an opportunity to practice4 ,keep experimenting1 until you can fare forth in any sort of weather and know that you will be able to bring back something printable upon your film or plate4 ,if the day is not bright1 shove your timer over to one-tenth of a second1 or to one-fifth4 ,certain experts in photography will bitterly deride this advice to keep the time set at one twenty-fifth of a second and to vary nothing but the size of the lens aperture4 ,they will point out--and be quite right about it--that the smaller the aperture the sharper the image1 and that a more professional method of procedure is to vary the timing so as to take all pictures with small stops4 ,to which ,i can only answer that this is all well enough for the trained photographer and that in these days of my semi-professionalism ,i practice that same sort of thing myself4 ,but in the beginning ,i was duly grateful to the man who gave me the golden maxim of the closer the object1 the larger the stop2 the more distant the object1 the smaller the stop--a piece of advice which enabled a novice1 with only one simple adjustment to worry about1 to take a passably sharp1 properly exposed picture4 ,so ,i pass the word along to you for whatever it may be worth4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,finding ,a ,,market ,a nose for news1 some perseverance1 a typewriter and a camera have thus far been listed as the equipment most essential to success for a writer of non-fiction who sets out to trade in the periodical market as a free lance4 ,rather brief mention has been made of the matter of literary style4 ,this is not because the writer of this book lacks reverence for literary craftsmanship4 ,it is simply because1 with the facts staring him in the face1 he must set down his conviction that a polished style is not a matter of tremendous importance to the average editor of the average ,american periodical4 ,journalists so clumsy that1 in the graphic phrase of a short grass poet1 they seem to write with their feet1 sell manuscripts with clock-like regularity to first-class markets4 ,the magazines1 like the newspapers1 employ re-write men to take crude manuscripts to pieces1 rebuild them and give them a presentable polish4 ,the matter of prime importance to most of our ,american editors is an article's content in the way of vital facts and human interest4 ,upon the matter of style the typical editor appears to take ,matthew ,arnold's words quite literally3 ,people think that ,i can teach them style4 ,what stuff it all is6 ,have something to say1 and say it as clearly as you can4 ,that is the only secret of style4 ,no embittered collector of rejection slips will believe me when ,i declare that the demand for worth-while articles always exceeds the supply in ,american magazine markets4 ,none the less it is true1 as every editor knows to his constant sorrow4 ,the appetite of our hundreds of periodicals for real stories never has been satisfied4 ,the menu has to be filled out with a regrettable proportion of bran and ersatz4 ,the fact that a manuscript lacks all charm of style will not blast its chances of acceptance if the story is all there and is typed into a presentable appearance and illustrated with interesting photographs4 ,a good style will enhance the manuscript's value1 but want of verbal skill rarely will prove a fatal blemish4 ,not so long as there are re-write men around the shop6 ,it is not a lack of artistry that administers the most numerous defeats to the novice free lance4 ,it is a lack of market judgment4 ,when he has completed his manuscript he sits down and hopefully mails it out to the first market that strikes his fancy4 ,he shoots into the dark1 trusting to luck4 ,a huge army of disappointed scribblers have followed that haphazard plan of battle4 ,they would know better than to try to market crates of eggs to a shoe store1 but they see nothing equally absurd in shipping a popular science article to the ,atlantic ,monthly or an uplift essay to the ,smart ,set4 ,they paper their walls with rejection slips1 fill up a trunk with returned manuscripts and pose before their sympathetic friends as martyrs4 ,many of these defeated writers have nose-sense for what is of national interest4 ,they write well1 and they take the necessary pains to make their manuscripts presentable in appearance4 ,if they only knew enough to offer their contributions to suitable markets1 they soon would be scoring successes4 ,what they can't get into their heads is that the names in an index of periodicals represent needs as widely varied as the names in a city directory4 ,take1 for example1 five of our leading weeklies3 ,the ,saturday ,evening ,post1 ,collier's1 ,leslie's1 ,the ,outlook and ,the ,independent4 ,they all use articles of more or less timeliness1 but beyond this one similarity they are no more alike in character than an ,american1 an ,irishman1 an ,englishman1 a ,welshman and a ,scot4 ,your burning hot news story which ,the ,saturday ,evening ,post turned down may have been rejected because the huge circulation of the ,post necessitates that its copy go to press six or seven weeks before it appears upon the newsstands4 ,you should have tried ,the ,independent1 which makes a specialty of getting hot stuff into circulation before it has time to cool4 ,your interview with a big man of ,wall ,street which was returned by ,the ,outlook might find a warm welcome at ,leslie's4 ,a character sketch of the ,democratic candidate for ,president might not please ,leslie's in the least1 but would fetch a good price from ,collier's4 ,your article on the ,prairie ,poets might be rejected by three other weeklies1 but prove quite acceptable to ,the ,outlook4 ,when you have completed a manuscript1 forget the inspiration that went into its writing and give cold and sober second thought to this matter of marketing4 ,the ,outlook might have bought the article that ,collier's rejected4 ,collier's might have bought the one that ,the ,outlook rejected4 ,every experienced writer will tell you that this sort of thing happens every day4 ,don't snort in disdain because the editor of ,the ,ladies' ,home ,journal rejects a contribution on economics4 ,maybe the lady's husband would like it4 ,so try it on ,the ,world's ,work1 or ,leslie's or ,system4 ,it might win you a place of honor1 with your name blazoned on the cover4 ,too many discouraged novices believe that the bromide of the rejection slip--rejection implies no lack of merit--is simply a piece of sarcasm4 ,it is nothing of the sort4 ,in tens of thousands of instances it is a solemn fact4 ,don't sulk and berate the editors who return your manuscript1 but carefully read the contribution again1 trying to forget for the moment that it is one of your own precious brain children4 ,cold-bloodedly size it up as something to sell4 ,then you may perceive that you have been trying to market a crate of eggs at a shoe store4 ,eggs are none the less precious on that account4 ,try again--applying this time to a grocer4 ,if he doesn't buy1 it will be because he already has all the eggs on hand that he needs4 ,in that event1 look up the addresses of some more grocers4 ,the same common sense principles apply in selling manuscripts to the magazines and newspapers as in marketing any other kind of produce4 ,the top prices go to the fellow who delivers his goods fresh and in good order to buyers who stand in need of his particular sort of staple4 ,composing a manuscript may be art1 but selling it is business4 ,naturally1 it requires practice to become expert in picking topics of wide enough appeal to interest the public which reads magazines of national circulation4 ,every beginner1 except an inspired genius1 is likely to be oppressed with a sense of hopelessness when he is making his first desperate attempts to break in4 ,the writer can testify feelingly on this point from his own experience4 ,kansas ,city was then my base of operations1 and it seemed as if ,i never possibly could find anything in that far inland locality worthy of nation-wide attention4 ,everything ,i wrote bounced back with a printed rejection slip4 ,at last1 however1 ,i discovered a story that appeared to be of undeniable national appeal4 ,missouri1 for the first time in thirty-six years1 had elected a ,republican governor4 ,i decided that the surest market for this would be a magazine dealing with personality sketches4 ,if a magazine of that type would not buy the story1 ,i was willing to own myself whipped4 ,on the afternoon when we were all sure that ,herbert ,hadley had won1 ,i begged a big lithographed portrait of the governor-elect from a cigar store man who had displayed it prominently in his front window4 ,there was no time1 then1 to search for a photograph4 ,a thrill of conviction pervaded me that at last my fingers were on a story that no magazine editor1 however much he might hate to recognize the worth of new authors1 could afford to reject4 ,the newspaper office files of clippings gave me all the information necessary for a brief biography2 the lithograph should serve for an illustration4 ,by midnight that ,irresistible ,wedge for entering the magazines was in the mails4444 ,sure enough1 the editors of ,human ,life bought it4 ,and1 by some miracle of speed in magazine making never explained to this day1 they printed it in their next month's issue4 ,the moral of this was obvious--that in the proper market a real story1 even though it be somewhat hastily written1 will receive a sincere welcome4 ,the week after this ,irresistible ,wedge appeared in print ,i threw up my job as a reporter and dived off of the springboard into free lancing4 ,a small bank account gave me assurance that there was no immediate peril of starving1 and ,i wisely kept a connection with the local newspaper4 ,in case disaster overtook me1 ,i knew where ,i could find a job again4 ,,chapter ,v ,a ,,beginner',s ,,first ,,adventures ,what happened to me in making a beginning as a free lance producer of non-fiction might happen to any one else of an equal amount of inexperience4 ,my home town had no professional magazine writer to whom ,i could turn for advice2 and though ,i devoured scores of books about writing1 they were chiefly concerned either with the newspaper business or with the technique of fiction1 and they all failed to get down to brass tacks about my own pressing problem1 which was how to write and sell magazine articles4 ,i was not seeking any more ,,abc advice about newspaper stories1 nor did ,i feel the least urge toward producing fiction4 ,i thirsted to find out how to prepare and market a manuscript to ,the ,saturday ,evening ,post or ,collier's1 but the books in the public library were all about the short story and the novel1 ,sunday features1 the evolution of the printing press or the adventures of a sob sister on an afternoon daily4 ,so ,i had to go out and get my education as a magazine writer in a school of tough experiences4 ,a few of these experiences are here recorded1 in the hope that some of the lessons that were enforced upon me may be of help to other beginners4 ,the immediate results of my plunge into free lancing were3 ,,january--not one cent4 ,,february--#ej4df4 ,seven dollars of this was for the magazine article4 ,no other magazine acceptances had followed the ,wedge4 ,i had not yet caught the national viewpoint1 nor had ,i picked up much practical information about the magazine markets4 ,by ,march it was becoming painfully evident that a fledgling free lance should1 if he is wise1 depend for a while upon a local newspaper for the larger part of his income4 ,in a school of hard knocks ,i learned to sell stories of purely local interest to the ,kansas ,city market1 topics of state-wide interest to the ,st4 ,louis ,sunday editors1 and contributions whose appeal was as wide as the ,gulf of ,mexico to newspapers in ,chicago and ,new ,york4 ,also ,i learned that if the free lance hopes to make any of these markets take a lively interest in him1 he will introduce his manuscripts with interesting photographs4 ,i rented a little black cube of a camera for twenty-five cents a day4 ,it had a universal focus and nothing to bother about in the way of adjustments4 ,to operate it you peeked into the range finder1 then threw a lever4 ,its lens was so slow that no pictures could be taken with it except in bright sunlight4 ,i wrote about motor cars1 willow farms1 celebrities1 freaks of nature in the city parks1 catfish and junk heaps--anything of which ,i could snap interesting photographs and find enough text to carry the picture4 ,march saw me earn #abf4jj by doing assignments for the city editor in the mornings and stories at space rates in the afternoons for the ,sunday section4 ,at night ,i plugged away at manuscripts hopefully intended for national periodicals4 ,but not until late in ,september did ,i land in a big magazine4 ,then--the thrill that comes once in a lifetime--,i sold an article to ,collier's4 ,it required tremendous energy to keep up such a pace1 but there was sweet comfort in the thought that1 technically at least1 ,i was now my own boss4 ,gradually1 ,i broke away from assignment work until ,i was free to write what ,i liked and to go where ,i pleased4 ,from finding material in the city1 ,i adventured into some of the near-by towns in ,missouri and ,kansas1 and soon was arguing a theory that in every small town the local correspondents of big city newspapers are constantly overlooking pay streaks of good feature stories4 ,usually ,i would start out with twenty-five dollars and keep moving until ,i went broke4 ,a railway journey no longer meant1 as in reportorial days1 a banquet in the dining-car and a chair on the observation platform1 charged up on an expense account4 ,often enough ,i slept in a day coach1 my head pillowed on a kodak wrapped in a sweater vest4 ,the elevation was just right for a pillow2 and at the same time the traveler was insured against theft of his most precious possession1 a brand new folding camera of post card size4 ,for the little snapshot box soon showed its weakness in an emergency and had to be replaced with a better machine which had an adjustable diaphragm1 a timing apparatus1 a focusing scale and a front like an accordion4 ,one afternoon it had happened that while two hundred miles from a city and twenty from the nearest railroad1 the snapshot box had been useless baggage for two hours1 while an anxious free lance sat perched on the crest of an ,ozark mountain studying an overcast sky and praying for some sunlight4 ,at last the sun blazed out for half a minute and the lever clicked in exultation4 ,this experience enforced a lesson3 ,learn to take any sort of picture1 indoors or out1 on land or water1 in any sort of weather4 ,after ,i got the new machine1 with a tripod to insure stability and consequent sharpness of outline1 a piece of lemon-colored glass for cloud photography and another extra lens for portrait work1 ,i began snapping at anything that held out even the faintest promise of allowing me to clear expenses in the course of acquiring needed experience4 ,i photographed the neighbors' children1 houses offered for sale1 downtown street scenes and any number of x-marks-the-spot-of-the-accident4 ,when a cyclone cut a swath through one of our suburbs1 ,i rushed half-a-dozen photographs to ,leslie's1 feeling again some of the same thrilling sort of confidence that had accompanied the first ,irresistible ,wedge4 ,back came three dollars for a single print4 ,rather a proud day1 that6 ,never before had one of my prints sold for more than fifty cents4 ,there were evenings after that when ,i meditated giving the writing game good-by in favor of photography2 and many a time since then the old temptation has recurred4 ,the wonder of catching lovely scenery in a box and of watching film and print reproduce it in black and white keeps ever fresh and fascinating to me1 gratifying an instinct for composition in one whose fingers are too clumsy to attempt to draw or paint4 ,in those early days of my adventures in photography an editor came very near the literal truth when he sarcastically observed3 ,young man1 life to you seems to be just one long undeveloped film4 ,parallel with improvement in skill as a photographer1 ,i developed a working plan to insure more profitable excursions afield4 ,my interested friends among editors and reporters gladly gave me hints about possible out-of-town sources of stories1 and ,i studied the news columns1 even to the fine type of the ,missouri and ,kansas state notes1 with all the avidity of an aged hobo devouring a newspaper in the public library4 ,for every possibility ,i made out a card index memorandum1 as-- ,,kanapolis1 ,,kas4 ,geographical center of the country4 ,once proposed as the capital of the nation--and of the state of ,kansas4 ,now a whistling station and a rock salt plant4 ,for each memorandum ,i stuck a pin in the state maps pasted on the wall of my workshop4 ,when there were several pins in any neighborhood1 ,i would sling my kodak over my shoulder1 the carrying case strapped to the tripod-top1 like a tramp with a bundle at the end of a stick4 ,and then away1 with an extra pair of socks and a harmonica for baggage4 ,besides the material that ,i felt certain of finding through advance information1 luck always could be trusted to turn up some additional stories4 ,the quickest way to find out what there was to write about in a town was simply to walk into the local newspaper office1 introduce myself and ask for some tips about possible features4 ,i cannot recall that any one ever refused me1 or ever failed to think of something worth while4 ,i do not know yet whether what ,i discovered then is a business or not1 but ,i made a living out of it4 ,whereas reporting on a salary had begun to be something of a grind1 the less profitable roamings of a free lance furnished a life that had color and everlasting freshness4 ,sometimes1 trusting in the little gods of the improvident1 ,i was lured into the backwoods of the ,ozarks by such a name as ,mountain ,home1 which caught my fancy on the map2 and with no definite stories in mind ,i would go sauntering from ,nowhere-in-,particular in ,northern ,arkansas to ,someplace ,else in ,southern ,missouri1 snapping pictures by the roadside and scribbling a few necessary notes4 ,one of those excursions1 which cost #bd4ce1 has brought a return1 to date1 of more than #bej1 which of course does not include the worth of a five days' lark with a young ,irishman who went on the trip as a novel form of summer vacation4 ,he found all the novelty he could have hoped for4 ,after some truly lyric passages of life in ,arkansas1 when we felt positively homesick about leaving one town to go on to another1 we reached a railroad-less county in ,missouri infested with fleas2 and to secure a discount on the stage fare on the thirty-five-mile drive from ,gainsville to ,west ,plains 7we had to have a discount to save enough to buy something to eat that night7 we played the harmonica for our driver's amusement until we gasped like fish4 ,his soul was touched either by the melody or by pity1 and he left us enough small change to provide a supper of cheese and crackers4 ,some happenings that must sound much more worth while in the ears of the mundane have followed1 but those first days of free lancing seem to me to be among the choicest in a journalistic adventurer's experience4 ,encounters with a variety of celebrities since then have proved no whit more thrilling than the discovery that our host1 ,jerry ,south of ,mountain ,home1 was lieutenant-governor of ,arkansas2 and though ,i have roamed in five nations1 no food that ,i ever have tasted so nearly approaches that of the gods as the strawberry shortcake we ate in ,bergman4 ,even in the crass matter of profits1 ,i found the small town richer in easily harvestable stories than the biggest city in the world4 ,a few years later ,i spent a week in ,london1 but ,i picked up less there to write about than ,i found in ,sabetha1 ,kansas1 in a single afternoon4 ,sabetha furnished3 ,half of the material for a motor car article4 7,when automobiles were still a novelty to the rural population47 ,this sold to ,leslie's4 ,an article on gasoline-propelled railway coaches1 for ,the ,illustrated ,world4 ,a short contribution on scientific municipal management of public utilities in a small town1 for ,collier's4 ,a character sketch about a local philanthropic money lender1 for ,leslie's and the ,kansas ,city ,star4 ,an account of the ,kansas ,amish1 a sect something like the ,tolstoys1 for ,kansas ,city1 ,st4 ,louis and ,new ,york newspapers4 ,short ,sunday specials about a #dj1jjj hospital and a thoroughly modern ,kansas farm house for ,kansas ,city and ,st4 ,louis ,sunday sections4 ,the profits of these excursions were not always immediate1 and until after ,i had worked many weeks at the trade there were periods of serious financial embarrassment4 ,to cite profitable trips too early is to get ahead of my story1 but the time is none the less propitious to remark that a country town or a small city certainly is as good a place for the free lance to operate 7once he knows a story when he sees it7 as is ,new ,york or ,chicago1 ,boston1 ,new ,orleans or ,san ,francisco4 ,i often wonder if ,i would not have been better off financially if ,i had kept on working from a ,kansas ,city headquarters instead of emigrating to the ,east4 ,i might have gone on this way for a long time1 in contentment1 for my profits were steadily mounting and my markets extending4 ,but one day my wanderings extended as far as ,chicago1 and there ,i ran across an old friend of student days4 ,he had been the cartoonist of the college magazine when ,i was its editor4 ,he wore1 drooping from one corner of his face1 a rah-rah bulldog pipe2 an enormous portfolio full of enormities of drawing was under one arm1 and1 dangling at the end of the other1 was one of the tiniest satchels that ever concealed a nightgown4 ,in answer to questions about what he was doing with himself1 he confessed that he was not making out any better than most other newly graduated students of art4 ,i argued that if ,chicago did not treat him considerately1 he ought to head for ,new ,york1 where real genius1 more than likely1 would be more quickly appreciated4 ,also1 if this was to his liking1 ,i would invite myself to go along with him4 ,we went4 ,now sing1 ,o ,muse1 the slaughter6 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,in ,,new ,,york',s ,,fleet ,,street ,the inexperienced free lance who attempts to invade ,new ,york1 as we did1 with no magazine reputation and no friends at court among the experts of the periodical market1 may be assured that he will receive a surprising amount of courtesy4 ,but this courtesy is likely to be administered to help soften the blows of a series of disappointments4 ,anybody but a genius or one of fortune's darlings may expect that ,new ,york1 which has a deep and natural distrust of strangers1 will require that the newcomer earn his bread in blood-sweat until he has established a reputation for producing the goods4 ,dear old simple-hearted ,father ,knickerbocker has been gold-bricked so often that a breezy1 friendly manner puts him immediately on his guard4 ,most of the editors with whom you will have to deal are home folks1 like yourself1 from ,oskaloosa and ,richmond and ,santa ,barbara and ,quincy4 ,few are native-born ,new ,yorkers1 and scarcely any of them go around with their noses in the air in an upstage ,eastern manner4 ,most of them are graduates of the newspaper school1 and remnants of newspaper cynicism occasionally appear in their outspoken philosophy4 ,but be not deceived by this1 for even in the newspaper office the half-baked cub who is getting his first glimpses of woman's frailties and man's weak will is the only cynic who means all he says4 ,all reporters who are worth their salt mellow with the years2 and editors who amount to much usually are ex-reporters trained to their jobs by long experience4 ,the biggest editors and the ones with the biggest hearts have the biggest jobs4 ,most of the snubs you will receive will come from little men in little jobs1 trying to impress you with a front4 ,the biggest editors of the lot are plain home folks whom you would not hesitate to invite to a dinner in a farmhouse kitchen4 ,what you ought to know when you invade ,new ,york without much capital and no reputation to speak of is that you are making a great mistake to move there so early1 and that most of the editors to whom you address yourself know you are making a mistake but are too soft-hearted to tell you so4 ,like most other over-optimistic free lances1 we invaded ,new ,york with an expeditionary force which was in a woeful state of unpreparedness4 ,in a street of brownstone fronts in mid-town ,manhattan1 a hurdy-gurdy strummed a welcome to us in the golden ,november sunlight1 and a canary in a gilt cage twittered ecstatically from an open window4 ,this moment is worthy of mention because it was the happiest that was granted to us for a number of months thereafter4 ,we rented a small furnished room1 top floor rear1 and went out for a stroll on ,broadway1 looking the city over with the appraising eyes of conquerors4 ,we were joyously confident4 ,one reason why we thought we would do well here was that the latter months of the period preceding our supposedly triumphal entry had seen me arrive at the point of earning almost as much money at free lancing as ,i could have made as a reporter4 ,meantime1 ,i had thrilled to see my name affixed to contributions in ,collier's1 ,leslie's1 ,outlook and ,outing1 not to mention a few lesser magazines4 ,i thought ,i knew a story when ,i saw one4 ,i knew how to take photographs and prepare a manuscript for marketing1 and ,new ,york newspapers and magazines had been treating me handsomely4 ,what we did not realize was that while the ,new ,york markets were hospitable enough to western material1 they required no further assistance in reporting the activities of ,manhattan ,island4 ,we had moved away from our gold mine4 ,our home and workshop now was a cubbyhole so small that every piece of furniture in the place was in close proximity to something else4 ,my battered desk was jam against my roommate's drawing table1 and his chair backed against a bed4 ,then1 except for a narrow aisle to the door1 there was a chair which touched another bed1 which touched a trunk2 the trunk touched ends with a washstand1 which was jam against a false mantel pasted onto the wall1 and the mantel was in juxtaposition with a bureau which poked me in the back4 ,the window looked south1 and adjacent buildings allowed it to have sunlight for almost half an hour a day4 ,yet it would have been a cheerful enough place if our mail had not been so depressing4 ,everything we sent out came right back with a bounce1 sometimes on the same day that we posted it4 ,with indefatigable zeal we wrote feature stories about big topics in ,america's biggest city and furnished illustrations for the text4 ,but the manuscripts did not sell4 ,for two bitter months we kept at it before we discovered what was wrong4 ,you may wonder how we could have been so blind4 ,but there was no one to tell us what to do4 ,we had to find out by experience4 ,in ,november our income was #fj4ij1 all of it echoes from the past for material written in the west4 ,how that crowd in the old office would laugh at us when we trailed back home1 defeated6 ,that was the thought which was at once a nightmare and a goad to further desperate effort4 ,day after day the ,art ,department and the kodak and ,i explored ,new ,york's highways and centers of interest4 ,the place was ripe with barrels and barrels of good feature stories1 and ,i knew it2 and the markets were not unfriendly1 for by mail ,i had sold to them before4 ,but now we could not land4 ,on ,christmas ,day there was a dismal storm4 ,our purses were almost flat1 and my box from home failed to arrive4 ,to get up an appetite for dinner that night we went for a walk in a joy killing blizzard4 ,i wanted to die and planned to do so4 ,the only reason ,i did not jump off of a pier was the providential intervention of several stiff cocktails4 7,i am theoretically a prohibitionist1 but grateful to the enemy for having saved my life47 ,the black cloud that shut out all sunlight was our measly total for ,december--#ah4jg4 ,one glimmer of hope remained in a growing suspicion that perhaps some of the stories we had submitted had seen print shortly before we arrived4 ,possibly some other free lances--,i would now estimate the number as somewhere between nine hundred and a thousand--had gone over the island of ,manhattan with a fine tooth comb8 ,i began haunting the side streets to seek out the most hidden possibilities1 and ended in triumph one afternoon in a little uptown bird store4 ,for two hours the young woman who was the proprietor of the store submitted to a searching interview1 and ,i emerged with enough material for a full page spread4 ,then1 taking no chances of being turned down because the contribution was too long1 ,i condensed the story into a column4 ,the manuscript went to the ,sunday ,editor of the ,new ,york ,sun1 with a letter pleading that just this once he grant me the special favor of a note to explain why he would not be able to use what ,i had to offer4 ,well enough written1 he scribbled on the rejection slip1 but ,miss ,virginia has been done too many times before4 ,with that a great light dawned4 ,further investigation discovered that we had run into the same difficulty on numerous other occasions4 ,we newcomers had no notion of how thoroughly and often the city had been pillaged for news4 ,we could not tell old stuff from new4 ,manhattan ,island is1 indeed1 the most perilous place in all ,america for the green and friendless free lance to attempt to earn a living4 ,there is a wonderful abundance of stories1 but nearly all of them that the eye of the beginner can detect have been marketed before4 ,any other island but ,manhattan6 ,when dog days came around1 ,i took a vacation on ,bois ,blanc in the ,straits of ,mackinac1 and found more salable stories along its thinly populated shores than ,manhattan had been able to furnish in three months4 ,everything ,i touched on ,bois ,blanc was new1 and all my own4 ,anything on ,manhattan is everybody's4 ,but to return to our troubles in ,new ,york4 ,the only hope ,i could see was to create a line of writing all our own4 ,this determination resulted in a highly specialized type of feature for which we found a market in the morning ,new ,york ,world4 ,it combined novelty with the utmost essence of timeliness4 ,for example1 precluding any possibility of being anticipated on the opening of ,coney ,island's summer season1 we wrote early in ,february3 ,if reports from unveracious employees of ,coney ,island are to be trusted1 the summer season of #aiaj is going to bring forth thrilling novelties for the air and the earth and the tunnels beneath the earth4 ,we listed then the ,biplane ,hat ,glide 7women were wearing enormous hats that season7 and ,motor ,ten ,pins--get in a motor car and run down dummies which count respectively1 a child1 ten points2 a blind man1 five2 a newsboy1 one4 ,then the ,shontshover4 ,we explained the ,shontshover in detail because it was supposed to have a particularly strong appeal to the millions who ride in the subway3 ,new ,york's good-natured enjoyment of its inadequate subway service is responsible for the third novelty of the season4 ,in honor of a gentleman who once took a ride in one of his own subway cars during the rush hour1 the device has been named the ',shontshover' 7from ',shonts' and 'shover'74 ,it is the sublimation of a subway car1 a cross between a cartridge and a sardine can4 ,the passengers are packed into the shell with a hydraulic ram1 then at high speed are shot through a pneumatic tube against a stone wall4 ,because of the great number of passengers the ,shontshover can carry in a day1 the admission price to the tube is to be only twenty-five cents4 ,we suggested on other occasions that new churches should have floors with an angle of forty-five degrees1 on account of the prevailing fashion of large hats among women2 that ,city ,hall employees were outwitting ,mayor ,gaynor's time clock by paying the night watchman to punch it for them at sunrise1 and that beauty had become a bar to a job as waitress in numerous ,new ,york restaurants4 7,o shades of ,george ,washington1 forgive us that one1 at least67 ,these squibs did nobody any harm1 and did us on the average1 the good of the price of a week's room rent4 ,we never meant them to be taken seriously or ever supposed that any one in the world would swallow them whole4 ,but among our readers was a square-headed ,german2 and one of the most absurd of our imaginings turned out1 as a result1 to be a physical possibility4 ,ever since it was announced1 a few days ago1 that hazing in a modified modernized form is to be permitted at ,west ,point1 we related1 a reporter for the ,world has been busily interviewing people of all ages and interests to find the latest ideas on the subject4444 ,some small boys in ,van ,cortlandt ,park yesterday afternoon1 diabolo experts1 suggested 'plebe diabolo4' ,it is simply diabolo for grown-ups4 ,a rope takes the place of the customary string and a first year man is used for a spool4 ,any one can see at a glance what a great improvement this would be over the old-fashioned stunt of tossing the plebe in a blanket4 ,a few months later ,i picked up a copy of the ,scientific ,american and chortled to read the account of a ,german acrobat who was playing in vaudeville as the ,human ,diabolo4 ,but this sort of thing was merely temporizing1 and we finally had to abandon it for subjects more substantial4 ,by a slow and harrowing process we learned our specialties and made a few helpful friends in ,new ,york's ,fleet ,street4 ,the fittest among the many manuscripts turned out by our copy mill survived to teach us that the surest way into print is to write about things closest to personal knowledge--simple and homely themes close to the grass roots4 ,we turned again to middle western topics and the magazines opened their doors to us4 ,we plugged away for six months and cleared a profit large enough to pay off all our debts and leave a little margin4 ,then we felt that we could look the west in the face again1 and go home1 if we liked1 without a consciousness of utter defeat4 ,for though we had not won1 neither had we lost4 ,our books struck a balance4 ,when the ,wanderlust began calling again in ,may1 ,i sat many an evening in the window of our little room1 gazing down into the backyard cat arena or up at the moon1 and dragging away at a ,missouri corncob pipe in a happy revery4 ,some of my manuscript titles of editorial paragraphs contributed to ,collier's trace what happened next3 ,longings at the ,window4 ,packing ,up4 ,a ,mood of ,moving ,day4 ,from ,cab to ,taxi4 ,outdoor ,sleeping ,quarters4 ,shortcake4 ,which is to say that it was sweet to see the home folks again1 to eat fried chicken and honest homemade strawberry shortcake and to slumber on a sleeping porch4 ,our forces had beat a strategic retreat1 but the morale was not gone4 ,our determination was firm to assault ,new ,york again at the first favorable opportunity4 ,meanwhile1 we had learned a thing or two4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,something ,,to ,,sell ,six months back home1 toiling like a galley slave1 furnished requisite funds for another fling at ,new ,york4 ,if ever a writer burned with zeal1 this one did4 ,mississippi ,valley summers often approach the torrid2 this one was a record breaker2 and ,i never shall forget how often that summer1 after a hard day's work as a reporter1 ,i stripped to the waist like a stoker and scribbled and typed until my eyes and fingers ached4 ,it was wise--and foolish4 ,wise1 because it furnished the capital with which every free lance ought to be well supplied before he attempts to operate from a ,new ,york headquarters4 ,foolish1 because it took all joy of life out of my manuscripts while the session of strenuousness lasted and left me wavering at the end almost on the verge of a physical breakdown4 ,nights1 ,sundays and holidays ,i plugged and slogged1 nor did ,i relent even when vacation time came round4 ,i sojourned to the ,michigan pine woods1 but took along my typewriter and kept it singing half of every day4 ,the new year found me in ,new ,york again1 alone this time and installed in a comfortable two-room suite instead of an attic4 ,a reassuring bank account bolstered up my courage while the work was getting under way4 ,this time ,i made a go of it2 and such ups and downs as have followed in the ten years succeeding have not been much more dramatic than the mild adventures that befall the everyday business man4 ,danger is past and now troubles begin4 ,that phrase of ,gambetta's aptly describes the situation of the average free lance when1 after the first desperate struggles1 he has managed to gain a reasonable assurance of independence4 ,confidence comes with experience1 and when you no longer have any grave fears about your ability to make a living at the trade1 your mind turns from elementary problems to the less distracting task of finding out how to make your discovered degree of talent count for all that it may be worth4 ,after trying your hand at a variety of subjects1 you will find your forte4 ,but take your time about it4 ,every adventure in composition teaches you something new about yourself1 your art and the markets wherein you gain your daily bread4 ,the way to learn to write--the only way--is by writing1 and you never will know what you might do unless you dare and try4 ,both as a matter of expediency and of getting as much fun out of the work as possible1 it is well in the beginning to be versatile4 ,eventually1 the free lance faces two choices3 ,he may become a specialist and put in the remainder of his life writing solely about railroads1 or about finance1 or about the drama4 ,or he may1 as ,robert ,louis ,stevenson did1 turn his hand as the mood moves him1 to fiction1 verse1 fables1 biography1 criticism1 drama or journalism--a little of everything4 ,for my own part1 ,i have always had something akin to pity for the fellow who is bound hand and foot to one interest4 ,let the fame and the greater profits of specialization go hang2 an able bodied writin' man can best possess his soul if he does not harness ,pegasus to plow forever in one cabbage patch4 ,like the ,ozark ,mountain farmer who also ran a country store1 a saw mill1 a deer park1 a sorghum mill1 a threshing machine and preached in the meetin' house on ,sunday mornings1 ,i have turned my pen to any honest piece of writing that appealed strongly enough to my fancy--travel1 popular science1 humor1 light verse1 editorials1 essays1 interviews1 personality sketches and captions for photographs4 ,genius takes a short cut to the highroad4 ,but waste not your sympathy on the rest of us1 for the byways have their own charm4 ,while one is finding his footing in the free lance fields1 he had best not hold himself above doing any kind of journalistic work that turns an honest dollar4 ,for he becomes richer not only by the dollar1 but also by the acquaintances he makes and the valuable experience he gains in turning that dollar4 ,there was a time--and not so long ago--when1 if the writer called at the waiting room of the ,leslie-,judge ,company1 the girl at the desk would try to guess whether he had a drawing to show to the ,art ,editor1 a frivolous manuscript for ,judge or a serious article for ,leslie's4 ,at the ,doubleday1 ,page plant the uncertainty was about whether the caller sought the editor of ,world's ,work1 ,country ,life1 the ,red ,cross ,magazine or ,short ,stories--he had1 at various times1 contributed to all of these publications4 ,smile1 if you like1 but there is no better way to discover what you can do best than to try your 'prentice hand at a great variety of topics and mediums4 ,the post-graduate course of every school of journalism is a roped arena where you wrestle1 catch as catch can1 for the honors bestowed by experience4 ,this experience1 painfully acquired1 should be backed up by an elementary knowledge of salesmanship4 ,super-sensitive souls there are who shudder at the mere mention of the word2 and why this is so is not difficult to understand--their minds are poisoned with sentimental misapprehensions4 ,get rid of those misapprehensions just as swiftly as you can4 ,if you have something to sell1 be it hardware or a manuscript1 common sense should dictate that you learn a little about how to sell it4 ,expert interviewers prepare themselves both for their topic and their man before they go into a confab--a practice which should be followed to some extent by every writer who sets out to interview an editor about a manuscript4 ,what you have to offer should be prepared to suit the needs of the editor to whom the contribution is addressed4 ,so you should study your magazine just as carefully as you do the subject about which you are writing4 ,in your interview with the editor or in the letter which takes the place of an interview1 state briefly whatever should be useful to his enlightenment4 ,that is all4 ,there you have the first principles of what is meant by an elementary knowledge of salesmanship4 ,if you don't know what you are talking about or anything about the possible needs of the man to whom you are talking1 how can you expect to interest him in any commodity under heaven8 ,say nothing that you don't believe--he won't believe it1 either4 ,never fool him4 ,if you do1 you may sell him once1 but never again4 ,there is no dark art to salesmanship2 it is simply a matter of delivering the goods in a manner dictated by courtesy1 sincerity1 common sense and common honesty4 ,be yourself without pose1 and don't forget that the editor--whether you believe it or not--is just as human as you are1 and quick to respond to the best that there is in you4 ,shake off the delusion that you need to play the good fellow to him1 like the old-fashioned type of drummer in a small town4 ,simply and sincerely and straight from the shoulder--also briefly1 because he is a busy man--state your case1 leave your literary goods for inspection and go your way4 ,he will judge you and your manuscript on merits2 if he does not1 he will not long continue to be an editor4 ,the two greatest curses of his existence 7,i speak from experience7 are the poses and the incurable loquaciousness of some of his callers and correspondents4 ,don't attempt to spring any correspondence school salesmanship on a real editor4 ,learn what real salesmanship is1 from a real salesman--who may sell bacon1 or steel or motor cars instead of manuscripts4 ,he lives down your street1 perhaps4 ,have a talk with him4 ,he will tell you of the profits in a square deal and in knowing your business1 and what can be accomplished by a little faith4 ,if you are temperamentally unfit to sell your own writings1 get a competent literary agent to do the job for you4 ,but don't too quickly despair1 for after all1 there is nothing particularly subtle about salesmanship4 ,sincerity1 however crude1 usually carries conviction4 ,if you know a story when you see it1 if you write it right and type it in professional form and give it the needed illustrations2 then if you offer it in a common sense manner to a suitable market1 you can be trusted to handle your own products as successfully as the best salesman in ,america--as successfully as ,charles ,schwab himself4 ,for1 above all1 remember this3 the editor is just as eager to buy good stuff as you are to sell it4 ,nothing is simpler than to make a sale in the literary market if you have what the editor wants4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,what ,,the ,,editor ,,wants ,suppose you were the manager of an immense forum1 a stadium like the one in ,san ,diego1 ,california1 where with the aid of a glass cage and an electrical device increasing the intensity of the human voice1 it is possible to reach the ears of a world's record audience of #ej1jjj persons4 ,what sort of themes would you favor when candidates for a place on your speaking program asked you what they ought to discuss8 ,the ,style of ,walter ,pater8 ,the ,fourth ,dimension8 ,florentine ,art of the ,fourteenth ,century8 ,not likely6 ,you would insist upon simple and homely themes1 of the widest possible appeal4 ,a parallel case is that of the editor of a magazine of general circulation4 ,he manages a forum so much larger than the famous stadium at ,san ,diego that the imagination is put to a strain to picture it4 ,on the generally accepted assumption that each sold copy of a popular magazine eventually reaches an average of five persons1 there is one forum in the magazine world of ,america which every week assembles a throng of ten million or more assorted citizens1 gathered from everywhere1 coast to coast1 men and women1 young and old1 every walk of life4 ,a dozen other periodicals address at least half that number1 and the humblest of the widely known magazines reaches a quarter of a million--five times as many persons as jammed their way into the ,san ,diego stadium one time to hear a speech by the ,president of the ,united ,states4 ,put yourself into the shoes of the manager of one of these forums1 and try to understand some of his difficulties4 ,a dozen times a day the editor of a popular periodical is besieged by contributors to make some sort of answer to the question3 ,what kind of material are you seeking8 ,what else can he reply1 in a general way1 but something of wide appeal1 to interest our wide circle of readers8 ,there are times1 of course1 when he can speak specifically and with assurance1 if all he happens to require at the moment to give proper balance to his table of contents is one or two manuscripts of a definite type4 ,then he may be able to say1 off-hand3 ,an adventure novelette of twenty thousand words1 or1 ,an article on the high cost of shoe leather1 three thousand five hundred words4 ,but this is a happy situation which is not at all typical4 ,ordinarily1 he stands in constant need of half a dozen varieties of material2 but to describe them all in detail to every caller would take more time than he could possibly afford to spare4 ,he cannot stop to explain to every applicant that among what ,robert ,louis ,stevenson described as the real deficiencies of social intercourse is the fact that while two's company three's a crowd2 that with each addition to this crowd the topics of conversation must broaden in appeal1 seeking the greatest common divisor of interests2 and that a corollary is the unfortunate fact that the larger the crowd the fewer and more elemental must become the subjects that are possible for discussion4 ,every editor knows that a lack of judgment in selecting themes of broad enough appeal to interest a nation-wide public is one of the novice scribbler's most common failings4 ,it is due chiefly to a lack of imagination on the part of the would-be contributor1 who appears to be incapable of projecting himself into the editorial viewpoint4 ,i can testify from my own experience that a single day's work as an editor1 wading through a bushel of mail1 taught me more about how to make a selection of subjects than six months of shooting in the dark as a free lance4 ,every editor knows that nine out of ten of the unsolicited manuscripts which he will find piled upon his desk for reading to-morrow morning will prove to be wholly unfitted for the uses of his magazine4 ,the man outside the sanctum fails utterly to understand the editor's dilemma4 ,this is the situation which has produced the staff writer1 and has brought down upon the editor the protests of his more discriminating readers against standardized fiction and against sundry uninspired articles produced to measure by faithful hacks4 ,the editor defends his course in printing this sort of material upon the ground that a magazine made up wholly of unsolicited material would be a horrid melange1 far more distressing to the consumer than the present type of popular periodical which is so largely made to order4 ,all editors read unsolicited material hopefully and eagerly4 ,many an editor gives this duty half of his working day and part of his evenings and ,sundays4 ,all of the reward of a discoverer is his if he can herald a new worth-while writer4 ,moreover1 the interest of economy bids him be faithful in the task1 for the novice does not demand the high rates of the renowned professional4 ,yet even on the largest of our magazines1 where the stream of contributions is enormous1 the most diligent search is not fruitful of much material that is worth while4 ,the big magazines have to order most of their material in advance1 like so much sausage or silk2 and much of the contents is planned for many months ahead4 ,scarcely any dependence can be placed upon the luck of what drifts into the office in the mails4 ,inevitably1 the magazines must have large recourse to big names1 not because of inbred snobbishness on the part of the editors but because the big name1 besides carrying advertising value1 is more likely than a little one to stand for material with a big theme1 handled by a writer of experience4 ,a surer touch in selecting and handling topics of nation-wide appeal is what counts most heavily in favor of the writer with an established reputation4 ,often enough it is not his vastly superior craftsmanship4 ,i know of several famous magazine writers who never in their lives have got their material into print in the form in which it originally was submitted4 ,they are what the trade calls go-getters4 ,they deliver the story as best they can1 and a more skillful stylist completes the job4 ,success in marketing non-fiction to popular magazines appears to hinge largely upon the quality of the thinking the writer does before he sets pen to paper4 ,a classic anecdote of ,new ,york's ,fleet ,street may illustrate the point3 ,the publisher of a national weekly was hiring a newspaper man as editor4 ,is this a writing job8 the applicant inquired4 ,no6 growled the publisher1 a thinkin' job6 ,the writer of non-fiction is in the same boat with the editor who buys his articles2 he calls himself a writer1 but primarily he is up against a thinking job4 ,the actual writing of his material is secondary to good judgment in selecting what is known as a compelling theme4 ,if he can produce a real story and get it onto paper in some sort of intelligent fashion1 what remains to be done in the way of craftsmanship can be handled inside the magazine office by a re-write man4 ,make sure1 first of all1 that what you have to say is something that ought to interest the large audience to which you address it4 ,nobody with a grain of common sense would attempt to discuss ,the ,style of ,walter ,pater to fifty thousand restless and croupy auditors in the vast ,san ,diego stadium1 but the average free lance sees nothing of equal absurdity about attempting to cram an essay on ,pater down the throats of a miscellaneous crowd in a stadium which is from a hundred to two hundred times as large--the forum into which throng the thousands who read one of our large popular magazines4 ,much as we may regret to acknowledge it1 there is no way to get around the fact that the larger and more general the circulation of a periodical1 the more universal must be the appeal of the material printed and the fewer the mainstays of interest1 until in a magazine with a circulation of more than a million copies the chief classifications of non-fiction material required can easily be counted upon the fingers4 ,the editor of such a publication necessarily is limited to handling rather elemental topics2 so it is not to be wondered at when we hear that the largest publication of them all makes its mainstays two such universally interesting and world-old themes as business and the way of a man with a maid4 ,examine any popular magazine which has a circulation of general readers1 speaking to a forum of anywhere from a quarter of a million to ten million assorted readers1 and you will find that the non-fiction material which it is most eager to buy may easily be classified into half a dozen types of articles1 all concerned with the ruling passions of the average ,american1 as3 #a4 ,his job4 #b4 ,his hearthstone4 #c4 ,his politics4 #d4 ,his recreations4 #e4 ,his health4 #f4 ,happenings of national interest4 ,examine a few of these types of contributions to arrive at a clearer understanding of why they are so justly popular4 ,your average ,american is1 first of all1 keenly interested in his job4 ,it is much more to him1 usually1 than just a way to make a living4 ,it fascinates him like a game1 and you often hear him describe it as a game4 ,what1 then1 is more natural than that he should eagerly read articles of practical helpfulness concerned with his activities in office or store1 factory or farm8 ,the largest of our popular magazines never appear without something which touches this sort of interest1 stimulating the man of affairs to strive after further successes and advancement in his chosen occupation4 ,many specialized business and trade publications and more than a score of skillfully edited farm magazines thrive upon developing this class of themes to the exclusion of all other material4 ,a second vital interest is the hearthstone--suggesting such undying topics as love and the landlord1 marriage and divorce1 the training of children1 the household budget1 the high cost of living1 those compelling themes which have built up the women's magazines into institutions of giant stature and tremendous power4 ,politics is another field of almost universal interest1 broadening every day now that women have the ballot and now that our vision is no longer limited to the homeland horizon1 but finds itself searching eagerly onward into international relationships4 ,once we were content1 as a national body politic1 to discuss candidates for the ,presidency or what our stand should be upon currency and the tariff4 ,to-day we are also gravely concerned to know what is to become of ,russia and ,germany1 or how the political and social unrest in ,france and ,italy and ,england will affect the peace of the world4 ,as a fourth point1 your average ,american these days is quick to respond to anything worth while concerning his recreations4 ,as a consequence1 much space is reserved in the big magazines for articles on society1 travel1 the theater and the movies1 motor cars1 country life1 outings1 and such popular sports as golf1 baseball and tennis4 ,every one of these topics1 besides being dealt with in the general magazines1 has its own special mouthpiece4 ,health always has been a subject constantly on the tip of everybody's tongue1 but never before has so much been printed about the more important phases of it than appears in the popular magazines of to-day4 ,knowledge of the common sense rules of diet1 exercise1 ventilation and the like are becoming public possession--thanks largely to the magazines and the newspaper syndicates4 ,a sixth mainstay of the magazines is in the presentation of articles dealing with happenings of national interest or personalities prominent in the day's news4 ,this task grows increasingly difficult as the newspapers tighten their grip upon the public's attention and as the news pictorials of the moving picture screen gain in popular esteem by improved technical skill and more intelligent editing4 ,the magazine of large circulation must go to press so long before the newspapers and the films that much perishable news must be thrown out1 even though it is of nation wide appeal4 ,the magazines are coming to find their greatest usefulness in the news field in gathering up the loose ends of scattered paragraphs which the daily newspapers have no time to weave together into a pattern4 ,in the magazine the patchwork of daily journalism is assembled into more meaningful designs4 ,local news is sifted of its provincialism to become matter of national concern4 ,topics which you rapidly skimmed in the afternoon newspaper three or four weeks ago are re-discussed in the weekly or monthly magazines in a way which often makes you feel that here1 for the first time1 they become of personal import4 ,the purpose of the suggestions sketched above is not to supply canned topics to ready writers1 but to set ambitious scribblers to the task of doing some thinking for themselves4 ,instead of shiftlessly tossing the whole burden of responsibility for choice of topics to a hard driven editor1 and whining1 ,please give me an idea61 search around on your own initiative for a theme worth presenting to the attention of a throng of widely assorted listeners--for a story that ought to appeal to ,america's multitudes4 ,if your topic is big enough for a big audience1 your chances are prime to get a hearing for it4 ,dig up the necessary facts1 the human interest and the national significance of the case4 ,then1 rest assured1 that story is what the editor wants4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,and ,,if ,,you ,,do-- ,something in the misty sunshine this morning made you restless4 ,vague longings1 born of springtime mystery1 stirred your blood1 quickened the imagination4 ,roads that never were1 and mayhap never will be1 beckoned you with their sinuous curves and graceful shade trees toward velvety fields beyond the city's skyline4 ,the sweet fragrance of blossoming orchards tingled in your nostrils and thrilled you with wanderlust4 ,haunting melodies quavered in your ears4 ,your old briar pipe never tasted so sweet before4 ,adventure never seemed so imminent4 ,a golden day4 ,what will you do with it8 ,you could write to-day1 but if you did1 you know you could support no patience for prosy facts1 statistics and photographs4 ,whatever urge you feel appears to be toward verse or fiction4 ,well1 why not8 ,try it6 ,you never know what you might do in writing until you dare4 ,verse is largely its own reward4 ,fiction1 when it turns out successfully1 fetches a double reward4 ,it pays both in personal satisfaction1 as a form of creative art1 and also as a marketable commodity1 which always is in great demand1 and which can be cashed in to meet house rent and grocers' bills4 ,it is not within the scope of this little book--nor of its author's abilities--to attempt a discussion of fiction methods4 ,too many other writers1 better qualified to speak1 have dealt with fiction in scores of worth while volumes4 ,too many successful story tellers have related their experiences and treated1 with authority1 of the short story1 the novelette and the long novel4 ,the purpose here can be only to urge that an attempt to write fiction is a logical step ahead for any scribbler who has won a moderate degree of success in selling newspaper copy and magazine articles4 ,the eye that can perceive the dramatic and put it into non-fiction1 the heart that knows human interest1 the understanding that can tell a symbol1 the artist-instinct that can catch characteristic colors1 scents and sounds1 all should aid a skilled writer of articles to turn his energies1 with some hope of achievement1 toward producing fiction4 ,the hand that can fashion a really vivid article holds out promise of being able to compose a convincing short story1 if grit and ambition help push the pen4 ,the temptation to dogmatize here is strong1 for the witness can testify that he has seen enviable success crown many a fiction writer who1 apparently1 possessed small native talent for story telling1 and who won his laurels through sheer pluck and persistence4 ,one of these pluggers declares he blesses the rejection slip because it eliminates so many quitters4 ,but of course it would be absurd to believe that any one with unlimited courage and elbow grease could win at fiction1 lacking all aptitude for it4 ,just as there are photographers who can snap pictures for twenty years without producing a single happy composition 7except by accident71 and reporters who never develop a nose for news1 there are story writers who can master all the mechanics of tale-telling1 through sheer drudgery1 and yet continually fail to catch fiction's spark of life4 ,they fail1 and shall always fail4 ,yet it is better to have strived and failed1 than never to have tried at all4 ,why8 ,for the good of their artists' consciences1 in the first place4 ,and1 in the second1 because no writer can earnestly struggle with words without learning something about them to his trade advantage4 ,a confession may be in order3 your deponent testifies freely1 knowing that anything he may say may be used against him1 that for years he has been a tireless producer of unsuccessful fiction1 yet he views his series of rebuffs in this medium calmly and even somewhat humorously4 ,for1 by trade1 he is a writer of articles1 and he earnestly believes that the mental exercise of attempting to produce fiction acts as a healthy influence upon a non-fictionist's style4 ,it stimulates the torpid imagination4 ,it quickens the eye for the vivid touches1 the picturesque and the dramatic4 ,it is a groping toward art4 ,art1 writes one who knows1 is a mistress so beautiful1 so high1 so noble1 that no phrases can fitly characterize her1 no service can be wholly worthy of her4 ,perhaps such art as goes into the average magazine article is not likely to merit much high-sounding praise4 ,in our familiar shop talk we are prone to laugh about it4 ,but even the most commercial-minded of our brotherhood cherishes deep in his heart a craftsman's pride in work well done4 ,so your deponent testifies in his own defense that his copybook exercises in fiction1 half of which end in the wastebasket1 seem well worth the pains that they cost1 so long as they help keep alive in his non-fiction bread-winners a hankering after 7if not a flavor of7 literary art4 ,and now must he apologize further for using a word upon which writers in these confessedly commercial days appear to have set a taboo8 ,then a passage from ,the ,study of ,literature 7,arlo ,bates7 may serve for the apology3 ,life is full of disappointment1 and pain1 and bitterness1 and that sense of futility in which all of these evils are summed up2 and yet were there no other alleviation1 he who knows and truly loves literature finds here a sufficient reason to be glad he lives4 ,science may show a man how to live2 art makes living worth his while4 ,existence to-day without literature would be a failure and a despair2 and if we cannot satisfactorily define our art1 we at least are aware how it enriches and ennobles the life of every human being who comes within the sphere of its gracious influence4 ,so1 we repeat3 for the good of the artist's self-respect as well as for his craftsmanship it is worth while to attempt fiction4 ,if only as a tonic6 ,if only to jog himself out of a rut of habit6 ,if he succeeds with fiction he has bright hopes of winning much larger financial rewards for his labor than he is likely to gain by writing articles4 ,non-fiction rarely brings in more than one return upon the investment1 but a good short story or novel may fetch several4 ,first1 his yarn sells to the magazine4 ,then it may be re-sold 7second serial rights7 to the newspapers4 ,finally1 it may fetch the largest cash return of all by being marketed to a motion picture corporation as the plot for a scenario4 ,in some instances even this does not exhaust all the possibilities1 for if ,british magazines and bookmen are interested in the tale1 the ,english rights of publication may add another payment to the total4 ,not all of the features of this picture1 however1 should be painted in rose-colors4 ,a disconcerting and persistent rumor has it that what once was a by-product of fiction--the sale of movie rights--is now threatening to run off with the entire production4 ,the side show1 we are warned1 is shaping the policy of the main tent4 ,which is to say that novelists and magazine fiction writers are accused of becoming more concerned about how their stories will film than about how the manuscripts will grade as pieces of literature4 ,to get a yarn into print is still worth while because this enhances its value in the eyes of the producers of motion pictures4 ,but the author's real goal is no longer good writing1 so much as remunerative picture possibilities4 ,we set this down not because we believe it true of the majority of our brother craftsmen1 but because evidences of such influences are undeniably present1 and do not appear to have done the art of writing fiction any appreciable benefit4 ,if your trade is non-fiction1 and you turn to fiction to improve your art rather than your bank account1 good counsel will admonish you not to aim at any other mark than the best that you can produce in the way of literary art4 ,for there lies the deepest satisfaction a writer can ever secure--art makes living worth his while4 ,,chapter ,x ,,forever ,,at ,,the ,,crossroads ,keep studying4 ,keep experimenting4 ,set yourself harder tasks4 ,never be content with what you have accomplished4 ,match yourself against the men who can outplay you1 not against the men you already excel4 ,keep attempting something that baffles you4 ,discontent is your friend more often than your enemy4 ,from the moment that he is graduated out of the cub reporter class1 every writer who is worth his salt is forever at the crossroads1 perplexed about the next turn4 ,nowhere is smugness of mind more deadly than in journalism4 ,to progress you must forever scale more difficult ascents4 ,the bruises of rebuffs and the wounds of injured vanity will heal quickly enough if you keep busy4 ,defeated or undefeated1 the writer who always is trying to master something more difficult than the work he used to do preserves his self-respect and the respect of his worth-while neighbors4 ,the fellow with the canker at his heart is not the battler but the envious shirker who is too proud to risk a fall4 ,swallow what you suppose to be your pride2 it really is a false sense of dignity4 ,make a simple beginning in the university of experience by learning with experiments what constitutes a story and by drudging with pencil and typewriter to put that story into professional manuscript form4 ,get the right pictures for it2 then ship it off to market4 ,if the first choice of markets rejects you1 try the second1 the third1 fourth1 fifth and sixth--even unto the ninety-and-ninth4 ,few beginners have even a dim notion of the great variety of markets that exist for free lance contributions4 ,there are countless trade publications1 newspaper syndicates1 class journals1 house organs1 and magazines devoted to highly specialized interests4 ,nearly all of these publications are eager to buy matter of interest to their particular circles of readers4 ,every business1 every profession1 every trade1 every hobby has its mouthpiece4 ,remember this when you are a beginner and the big magazines of general circulation are rejecting your manuscripts with a clock-like regularity which drives you almost to despair4 ,try your 'prentice hand on contributions to the smaller publications4 ,that is the surest way to learn while you earn in free lancing4 ,these humble markets need not cause you to sneer--particularly if you happen to be a humble beginner4 ,every laboratory experiment in manuscript writing and marketing1 though it be only a description of a shop window for a dry goods trade paper1 or an interview with a boss plumber for the ,gas ,fitter's ,gazette1 will furnish you with experience in your own trade1 and set you ahead a step on the long road that leads to the most desirable acceptances4 ,the one thing to watch zealously is your own development1 to make sure that you do not too soon content yourself with achievements beneath your capabilities4 ,start with the little magazines1 but keep attempting to attain the more difficult goals4 ,meanwhile1 you need not apologize to any one for the nature of your work1 so long as it is honest reporting and all as well written as you know how to make it4 ,stevenson1 one of the most conscientious of literary artists1 declared in a ,letter to a ,young ,gentleman ,who ,proposes to ,embrace the ,career of ,art1 that the first duty in this world is for a man to pay his way1 and this is one of your confessed purposes while you are serving this kind of journalistic apprenticeship4 ,until he arrives1 the novice must1 indeed1 unless he be exceptionally gifted1 pay assiduous court to the bourgeois who carries the purse4 ,and if in the course of these capitulations he shall falsify his talent1 it can never have been a strong one1 and he will have preserved a better thing than talent--character4 ,or if he be of a mind so independent that he cannot stoop to this necessity1 one course is yet open3 he can desist from art1 and follow some more manly way of life4 ,in short1 so long as you keep moving toward something worth attaining1 there is nothing to worry about but how to keep from relapsing into smugness or idleness4 ,the besetting temptation of the free lance is to pamper himself4 ,he is his own boss1 can sleep as late as he likes1 go where he pleases and quit work when the temptation seizes him4 ,as a result1 he usually babies himself and turns out much less work than he might safely attempt without in the least endangering his health4 ,when he finds out later how assiduously some of the best known of our authors keep at their desks he becomes a little ashamed of himself4 ,though they may not work1 on the average1 as long hours as the business man1 they toil far harder1 and usually with few of the interruptions and relaxations from the job that the business man is allowed4 ,four or five hours of intense application a day stands for a great deal more expenditure of energy and thought than eight or nine hours broken up with periods when one's feet are literally or metaphorically on the desk and genial conversation is flowing4 ,most of the men and women who make a living out of free lancing earn every blessed cent of it2 and the amount upon which they pay an income tax is1 as a rule1 proportioned rather justly to the amount of concentrated labor that they pour into the hopper of the copy mill4 ,you who happen to have seen a successful free lance knock off work in mid-afternoon to play tennis1 or to skim away toward the country club in his new motor car are too likely to exclaim that his is the existence6 ,forgetting1 of course1 the lonesome hours of more or less baffling effort that he spent that day upon a manuscript before he locked up his workshop4 ,and the years he spent in drudgery1 the bales of rejection slips he collected1 the times that he had to pawn his watch and stick pin to buy a dinner or to pay the rent of a hall bedroom4 ,young ,gentlemen ,who ,propose to ,embrace the ,career of ,art might be shocked to learn--though it would be all for their own good--that a great many writers who are generally regarded with envy for their luck take the pains to follow the market notes in the ,authors' ,league ,bulletin1 the ,bookman and the ,editor ,magazine with all the care of a contractor studying the latest news of building operations4 ,not only do these writers read the trade papers of their calling2 they also1 with considerable care1 study the magazines to which they sell--or hope to sell--manuscripts4 ,they do not nearly so often as the novice make the faux pas of offering an editor exactly the same sort of material that he already has printed in a recent or a current issue4 ,they follow the new books4 ,they keep card indexes on their unmarketed manuscripts1 and toil on as much irksome office routine as a stock broker4 ,a surprisingly large number of the arrived do not even hold themselves above keeping note books1 or producing1 chiefly for the beneficial exercise of it1 essays1 journals1 descriptions1 verse and fiction not meant to be offered for sale--solely copybook exercises1 produced for self-improvement or to gratify an impulse toward non-commercial art4 ,for instances ,i can name a fiction writer who turns often to the essay form1 but never publishes this type of writing1 and an editorial writer who1 for the fun of it and the good he believes it does his style1 composes every year a great deal of verse4 ,a group of six ,michigan writers publish their own magazine1 a typewritten publication with a circulation of six4 ,these men are not content with their present achievements4 ,they regard themselves always as students who must everlastingly keep trying more difficult tasks to insure a steady progress toward an unattainable goal4 ,most of the studyin'1 ,abe ,martin once observed1 is done after a feller gets out of college1 and these gray-haired exemplars are--as all of us ought to be--still learning to write1 and forever at the crossroads4 99 99 99 99 99 ,,finis 99 99 99 99 99