Editor, the Forum:

Mr. Whitehead, in THE WRITER, severely castigates the mob of editors who permit - nay invite, even prescribe bunk for too large a majority of published material in America. Mr. Whitehead wants to see a general revolt of writers who give the editors what they want. He wants writers to refuse to produce deliberate hokum, and not "stultify themselves in the mad, competitive scramble in the fine art of turning out literary junk."

The plaint about the "magazine story" is timehonored. "Magazine story" has reached the dignity of becoming a technical term connoting fiction that is not worth serious attention. There is never a book of short stories published without the published critique dismissing a portion with the sole comment "For the rest, these are Magazine stories." Everyone is supposed to know what that means.

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But are we justified in blaming the "mob of office-boy editors" for this rottenness in Denmark, or even in going so far as to make them responsible for "lowering the standard of quality of English Prose"?

As far as the latter contention is concerned, this is surely the responsibility of the proprietors. It would mean altering the policy of some magazines. If an altruistic proprietor likes to lead a crusade by charging his office-boy editor to print nothing but "Quality and Distinction," all honour to him. If, however, he is satisfied with bunk and junk, then bunk and junk it has got to be, if the editor wants to keep his office. Naturally, in his own interests, the editor prints the best copy he can get. Moreover, if bunk, junk, and hokum sell the magazines, as they certainly do, it would appear that the editors do their job remarkably well.

After all, the reading public is the final court in which bunk, junk, and hokum are tried. It is the average mind that makes a best-seller, which admittedly is often trash, but always has one attribute which even highbrows concede-it invariably has a "good story" to tell. A writer, whether "new" or "young," who can write a "good story" is bound to be printed. Technique is a matter of indifference if the story has prima-facie evidence of being good. The average reader knows nothing and cares less about the ethics of technique, and every editor worthy of his salt is well aware of that.

average reader want bunk? Or, to put it more broadly, what kind of story is most popular?

The office-boy editors have a trick of frequently trying to find out the stories the public likes best. They often initiate contests on this very question. The results are illuminating.

You get a heart-to-heart talk, so to speak, with readers who have taken the trouble to set forth their considered views on the matter. You expect, and you find, the reason why the average American wife turns to her magazine for romance. And you may not expect, but you will certainly find where bunk comes in.

You will find a strong feeling running through all the answers, a feeling that the public is sick of reality. They want something that takes them away from real life, something with heroes and heroines doing gloriously impossible stunts. They tell you frankly they are aware of the improbability of the bunk, but say, pathetically enough, they are willing to accept ninety-nine hundredths of this glory-to-goodness story-telling so long as the remaining one per cent. touches an even remotely possible human existence.

And suppose writers refused to supply this sort of pabulum - what would be the result? It is highly improbable that the average public would buy "Quality and Distinction" in lieu. You cannot ram literature down the throats of a public that reads what it pleases. You might as well insist on a boy's reading, say, "The Pilgrim's Progress" when his soul yearns for "Jack o'the Cudgel" or the thrilling adventures of "Peter Podger and Sam Slocum." For the average reader is only a child of larger growth.

And yet, whatever his limitations may be, or wherever her preferences lie, there is probably the largest public of all for short stories that really are short stories - stories that have a point, a crisis of illumination of beauty or of terror, of wonder or of sheer surprise, that have something to say which can be communicated only through the medium of a short story. The best class of short story-the class, of course, that depends on poetic emotion for its effect is doubtless above the head of the average reader. But there are comparatively few of this class: gems like Katherine Mansfield's "The Doll's House" are all too rare. It is certain that none of the rest escapes recognition by a large circle of readers, and, incidentally, it is equally certain that anyone who can produce one of these real "short stories" has

This being so, the question arises, does the

only to ask, to receive the hire worthy of the labourer.

Can it be that the rottenness in Denmark is due to the dearth of real short stories rather than to the want of uplift in the average reader? If so, the remedy is that better work should be done in

Editor, the Forum:

turning out bunk, junk, and hokum instead of denying the average reader his cherished solatium by eliminating such products from the printed page. Gerald Franklin.

Fareham, Hants, England.

No other people, so far as I know, worship the notebook with such blind devotion as does the tribe of scribblers. They use it continually - I have done so myself; and they sacrifice some of their best ideas on its altar-this, too, I have done myself. But I now beg to question its usefulness. I, for one, am a backslider.

First, however, let us understand each other. No one will question the value of the notebook to the writer who deals in facts, figures, statistics. For him it is necessary. I make no attempt to wrest it from him. But for the remainder of us who attempt fiction and articles of more nearly the essay and editorial type- the notebook, I say it only after due consideration, is a hindrance.

Take a case from your own experience. A thought has entered your head; perhaps it was a plot for a story, perhaps it was an idea out of which an article might be built. What did you do? You seized a notebook and jotted it down. And that settled it. When you placed the thought on paper, fenced it in with black marks, your brain said, "Well, I'm through with that," and let it drop. Later you opened the notebook and tried to grasp the idea; tried to give it the force and beauty it had when it first came to you. But they were gone; and could no more be restored than could the soap-bubble you have prodded with your finger. You have no doubt met with the story that haunted you until in desperation you wrote it by way of getting it out of your system. Here is the identical thing you are doing every time you consign a story idea to the notebook.

But someone wails, "I must write it down or I'll forget it." You can waste your time that way if you want to; but personal experience has taught me that when an idea makes so little appeal that I must hang onto it by main strength, I am better off to let it go, and write about something that makes a stronger appeal.

Editor, the Forum:

I wish all devotees of the notebook would read John Burroughs. In his writings you will find no salt-cured ideas, refurbished a little, and served. His works are fresh; they live and breathe. He has this to say about his method of writing: "What I feel, I can express, and only what I feel. If I had run after the birds only to write about them, I never should have written anything that anyone would have cared to read." And again, “I rarely take notes and I have a very poor memory, but rely upon the affinity of my mind for a certain order of truths or observations. What is mine will stick to me, and what is not will drop off."

Try the Burroughs method awhile and you will be surprised at the results. Give your notebook a vacation; and when the next idea comes into your head, leave it there, nurse it, pamper it, let it take root, grow, blossom, and ripen right in your brain. Then, instead of jotting it down in a sketchy way, write it in its entirety. I believe this method is much more pleasant and congenial than the customary plan of pouncing upon the timid idea before it has really decided to make its home with you, yanking it out by the roots, dissecting, classifying, arranging, and cataloging its parts, sprinkling it with salt and saltpetre and filing it away in a pigeonhole marked A to F or G to M; then months later, digging it up and trying to knock some of the salt off and breathe the breath of life into it.

Almost anything is worth trying. I tried the notebook for years and found that it hampered my work. If you, too, are having trouble plucking meaty kernels from the dried husks that you find in your notebook, try allowing your ideas to ripen before you write them down. Then, after they have taken shape, write them. Give them all the freshness you can and all the fire you have. Try it. E. N. Moody.

Jackson, Wyoming.

Much has been written and said regarding ways and means of producing an American literature that will measure up to standards of its forebears. Generous sums have been donated by wealthy enthusiasts, anxious for the establishment of worth in American letters. Prizes have been offered by magazines for worthy contributions to the field of literary enterprise, and disinterested schools have been inaugurated for the purpose of promoting and stimulating a wholesome and beneficent character to this form of expression. Yet very

rarely does one find a profound opinion regarding a pleasurable solitude as the sine qua non of artistic writing.

It is my opinion that leisure is the one condition for the earnest writer. I do not mean by leisure that calm retirement where direction is absent, but the tranquil and conducted sequence of life-impressions, from whose suggestion proceed the harmonised word and the fitting phrase. We read of writers who type their thousands of words a week; we hear of reporters who, in a veritable hurricane of brain fervor dash off, in a feverish half-hour,

a hectic account of some national achievement. Such writing must be formal and stilted, running along the well-worn tracks of word and phrase, and bearing a currency far from standard worth.

Why is it that American industry should be so desirous of producing excellence of quality in material commodities, employing hosts of research workers, who plod their lonely way to the more perfect product, while the more permanent and lasting character of nationality is allowed to follow a path of casual attainment and indifferent achievement?

In the main, American literature exhibits hasty development and feverish production. A creative art cannot be subjected to impulsive spurts of momentary inspiration. Writing is a slow process. The interpreting of life-associations through the medium of the written word is a work that cannot be hurried. The writer works at the edge of things. He reaches out into the unexplored

Editor, the Forum:

regions of mind for exactness of phrase and for beauty of figure. He is a creator of things new, and his design is fashioned so as to secure coincidence of word and impression. This accomplishment is the result of patient labor in the solitudes where mind broods on human affairs, and ruminates on their interpretation.

The solitary soul is more often than not the productive one-not with a mass-productivity whereby words are merely assembled-but with a single creation hewn by hard labor from the rock of Truth itself. To be alone is the essential condition. To be apart from the hum of human activity after a long sojourn with men; to possess oneself of tranquil leisure after a familiar intercourse with the flow of human currents, is to find the true perspective of human endeavor, to strike the association of earth and Heaven to state the event in terms of the Eternal.

Strathcona, Alberta, Canada. H. R. Leaver.

After several years of writing, I still adhere to two mottoes: "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive" and "For who hath despised the day of small things?"

It is well to have ideals, of course, and to aspire to the Parnassian heights. But our grasp must exceed our reach, or, as Browning pertinently says, "what's Heaven for"? In the meantime, no struggling writer can afford to overlook the small stations along his journey.

When my first story was accepted by the Metropolitan Magazine on its third trip out, I fondly believed that my fame and fortune were assured. Taking the bit of Pegasus in my teeth, I urged him forward to the giddy steeps of the "Big Four," the early and undying goal of every wouldbe author. But then and there, my winged steed balked. My stellar achievement had been but a flash in the pan of success.

But, undismayed, I regularly bombarded lesser editorial sanctums. And just as regularly my work came back. Finally, however, my frenzy abated, and I sensibly allowed Pegasus to graze by the wayside, humbly accepting whatever gifts the gods chose to provide. I began receiving checks instead of bulky envelopes. Small, to be sure, but thrilling nevertheless. Almost as much so as that first one, which only stern necessity forbade my framing,

Now I regard my small markets as the most dependable of all. I still bombard the doors of the great, with occasional success. But it is more or less of a gamble, and it is pleasant to know that I can depend on a certain income from my established markets, come what may.

Chief among them are the Sunday School publications. These, being weeklies, use a vast amount of material. Generally speaking, they all require the same type of story, so that failing acceptance with one, your tale may find a home with another. It might be reduced to a sort of general formula.

A theme with an ethical, not necessarily religious, background, written convincingly and entertainingly around one dramatic incident. And all within three thousand words, or less.

Let no aspiring writer think that it is easy to write these stories. For so much must be eliminated references to smoking, dancing, the theatre, etc.—that one has left, it seems, nothing but a husk. A story of mine, written around a high school opera, was declined, and afterward accepted when I changed the opera to a concert! But take it all in all, the aspiring writer may find this a fertile field.

I would advise any would-be writer to avail himself of a copy of the "Free Lance Writers' Handbook" for a complete and reliable list of Sunday-school markets, and to follow the Manuscript Market department of THE WRITER for news of changes and of new publications.

I have sold to such publications about two hundred short stories, and I rarely have one left on my hands.

Another small but steady source of income is the greeting-card market. If you have a gift for rhyme or jingle, you may wrest many dollars from such reliable firms as the P. F. Volland Company, of Joliet, Illinois, the A. M. Davis Company, of Boston, the Gibson Art Company, of Cincinnati, Buzza Company, of Minneapolis, and others whose addresses you will find in the "Free Lance Writers' Handbook." If you can write a greeting that hasn't been done before, you will have discovered, figuratively speaking, an oil well in this particular field.

Third in my list of "small things" is the trade paper market. Without having had newspaper training, nor even possessing a nose for news, I have earned many dollars writing articles for the trade press-articles on all the various industries, etc. A brief write-up of an ice cream factory sold to the Dairy World, and several thrift stories brought substantial checks from the Bank

er's Extension Institute, of Chicago.

The various newspapers offer many attractive opportunities to the writer. Nearly all of them buy short stories, ranging from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred words. Each newspaper requires about thirty stories a month. I know of one writer who turns out three such stories before breakfast. While the pay is not large — about eight dollars per story-it is not to be disregarded, especially if one establishes a market that will buy one a day.

In this connection, there are also the contest features to be considered. I have a friend who

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY will publish in June a book, entitled "Rejections of 1927," containing fifteen or sixteen stories which are not eligible for magazines because of advertising policies or editorial prejudice. Stories by Ben Ames Williams, Thomas Beer, Gouverneur Morris, and similar authors have already been accepted, but several more, dealing with love, adventure, and, especially, humor are wanted. The O'Brien and O. Henry collections use the best published stories, but this volume is to include the best unpublished stories, and the publishers feel that in this way some of the finest short story material in America will be brought to the attention of readers. Payment will be made by dividing the royalties by the number of authors, and if the book meets expenses it will be published annually. Unknown writers will be specially encouraged, and a "big name" will not influence judgment in the slightest. The fact that half the stories in the book will probably be by the biggest writers in the country is due simply to their work being of high caliber. Publication will be made by Doran, and in the publicity material photographs and brief biographies of the writers will be used. Names will probably appear on the jacket of the book and in some ad

vertising, and the publishers believe that a writer will benefit greatly by appearing in the book. Manuscripts should be submitted by the end of January, and should be addressed to Doubleday, Doran & Company, Attention C. H. Baker, Jr., 244 Madison avenue, New York. Return envelope, with postage, should be sent, and prompt decisions will be made.

RUST CRAFT PUBLISHERS, INC., - 1000 Washington street, Boston, Mass., from time to time are in need of good short phrases for humorous cards for Birthdays, Illness, and General Friendship sale. Such greetings need be only a few words, but they must be right up to the minute in appropriateness.

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST- Phila

delphia, Penn., has no special manuscript needs at the present time, but the editors are always glad to consider stories of all lengths, special articles, and material for the various departments of the periodical.

THOMAS NELSON & SONS-381 Fourth avenue, New York, are interested, primarily, in books for children, particularly those for children under ten. They would like to have writers bear in mind