during the work on your next effort," says one well-known writer. "I revise until I have done the best I can, always," says another. "Sometimes, of course, I find that revision has not improved what I first wrote, and then I go back to it; but mainly I revise until the printed book is on my table, and then I see clearly for the first time how much more I should have revised." Another: "I revise a great deal, and have always done so. Nothing comes easy to me." Another: "Everything I have published has been written from four to eight times. In my earlier life I revised rather more than I do now." Still another: "I generally revise every serious thing I write two or three times; everything I put in book covers, four or five times." If the experience of a lifetime has taught such persistence and patience to those who are favored with special ability, it would seem that any learner ought to be willing to follow up every opportunity he has for improvement, before he says his writing is the best that he can do.

2. Aids to self-criticism. Every student who goes about his work thoughtfully will soon discover various means of aiding himself in revision. Inasmuch as everyone must have certain methods that are distinctly his own, it would be useless to try to enumerate all of them here; but two or three of them are used so universally and are so easily employed that no one who has the least interest in his work should fail to take advantage of them. The first of these is the reading of some kind of good literature immediately before beginning criticism. This practice has at least two good effects. First, it clarifies the mind. Our mental life is so complex and is ordinarily such a medley of essentials and non-essentials that it is difficult for us to see things of our own creation in their true perspective. But if we turn our attention to some writer who has succeeded in giving his reader only the essentials,

fully exercised the power of selection,

who has himself skillwe are helped surpris

ingly in gaining the clear, organized mental condition we desire. Again, this practice provides us with high literary standards, and as a result we are better fitted to judge our own work.

Instead of having only the vague, incomplete standards which have resulted slowly from years of reading and study, we have these general standards sharpened and brought to point. Thereby we are enabled to compare our own product with the definite impression of something that possesses unquestioned merit.

The second of these aids is the reading of our manuscript aloud. Since language is naturally addressed to the ear, much of our success in its use, even though we address it to the mind through the eye by writing it upon paper, will depend upon the presence or absence of those qualities which belong to the best speech. There is, then, no surer way of making a test for these qualities, or, on the other hand, for those that militate against them, than by addressing our writing to our own ears. In this way we can easily detect abrupt or awkward transitions from paragraph to paragraph or from sentence to sentence, weakness or undue abruptness in sentence endings, and, above all, those unnecessary repetitions of phrases and individual words which usually characterize with unfailing certainty the work of the inexperienced craftsman.

This reading aloud to oneself may often be supplemented by reading to another person. The truth is, after we have thought upon a subject for a long time, it is difficult for us to tell whether or not our discussion of it will be as clear to other people as it is to ourselves. The terms we use may not be familiar to them; we may have taken for granted too much knowledge on their part; and we may have reached conclusions without expressing all the necessary steps in the process. These matters we cannot easily determine in what we have written ourselves, because the ground we have covered is so thoroughly familar to us that we can readily follow our own thought processes over it without any written guide at all. We do not, therefore, see how another might easily stumble. As soon, however, as we read to some friendly critic who is good enough to listen to us, all these dark, rough, or unbridged places appear. "What do you mean there?" he asks; "I don't understand that." "That paragraph isn't as good as the

preceding one." "I never heard that word before." "Your sentences are too choppy; they go along in rub-a-dub-dub style." "Better leave that word out; I don't like it." "I think the paragraph ought to be toned down." Such remarks set us to thinking anew. The other person's point of view enables us to see how far we were from saying what we really meant to say.

C. CHANGES TO BE ATTEMPTED IN REVISION

From what has been said thus far we ought to begin to see what changes we may attempt in revision with assurance of success. On account of the fact that the subject-matter of a given piece of written work must be reasonably well in hand before we can commence writing with any degree of intelligence, there are few opportunities to change the material after it has been committed to paper. Of course, it is often possible to condense some parts and amplify others, and to supply omissions. Nevertheless, bodily subtractions and additions are always dangerous to sequence and consistency. Likewise comparatively little should be attempted in structure, except in sentences or clauses. It is not wise, then, to write with the hope that if we do not feel satisfied with what we say, we can shift our paragraphs a few times and have another coherent organization. We may, however, sometimes rearrange the sentences in a paragraph for emphasis, coherence, or variety, and we may very easily change individual sentences in order to emphasize words, to bring modifiers into position, or to bring pronouns close to their antecedents. But the greatest opportunity for effective revision always lies in the details of diction. Nouns that do not express the thought accurately may be displaced; adjectives and adverbs may be studied and improved; colorless verbs that merely indicate action may be put aside for those which have color and express a particular style or kind of action; and prepositions and conjunctions may be rechosen to make thought relations more explicit.

But what, it may be asked, are we to do if we find that the

first draft of our writing demands more sweeping changes than these? There is but one answer: we should put aside what we have done and begin a new copy, writing quite independently of the first one. It is probable that the increased familiarity with our subject-matter that has come with the writing of the first copy will enable us to write a second one that we can revise effectively. If, however, it has not, we should begin again and make yet another. It is not at all an unusual experience for the most skillful writer to make three or four, or even a half dozen different copies of his work. Such procedure may seem to be out of harmony with the statement that most writers plan their work carefully; but it is not. The struggle from the first vague conception of a group of ideas up through the mists toward definiteness and clarity is so exacting and so uncertain that we must always strive as if we were at the limit of our power, yet take for granted the possibility of being required to fall back and begin again, even with greater exertion. Thus we try to reach perfection in the plan we make, again in the act of writing, and yet again in revision or rewriting. Every step in the development of the written product should be an effort at finality, yet each succeeding step should be an assumption that the preceding one had possibly fallen short. Only thus may we hope to approach reasonable perfection. Many rewritings may not be required, but if they are, we should never shrink from them.

D. DANGERS IN REVISION

It is scarcely necessary to say that there are dangers in revision. The constant effort which we make to destroy crudity and imperfection may at the same time destroy freshness. Moreover, the repeated application of the mind to the details of writing may result in the loss of perspective, - the ability to see the work as a whole, the parts in their relations to one another. Furthermore, too long continued exercise of the powers of analysis and criticism may result in a temporary paralysis of the creative faculty, which, as we have seen, must

be subordinated during self-criticism. That many of us, however, should injure ourselves in any of these ways is such a remote possibility that the dangers need not be dwelt upon at length. If we are only aware that such dangers exist, it is not likely that they will cause us serious trouble.

VI. VARIATIONS IN THE PROCESSES OF COMPOSING

In turning away from this discussion of the processes of composing, it might be well to remind ourselves that in practice there are great variations in these processes. They should not be looked upon as formulas which will inevitably bring certain results under all circumstances. A mastery of them implies enough creative intelligence to see that they vary according to the kind of composition which one writes, and according to the person who employs them. Thus we find that the material of instrumental composition lends itself more definitely to the rigid divisions of a plan; that the cardinal principles are more clearly evident in instrumental composition, just as the lines in mechanical drawing are sharper than those in landscape painting; and, usually, that less may be done in revision if the writing is wholly instrumental than if it is wholly æsthetic. Thus, too, every student must learn for himself which of the processes involved in composing contributes most to the perfecting of his work. Some writers give infinite pains to the preliminary steps and write with great deliberation, thereby making the necessity of revision slight; others, because their minds refuse to work with much deliberation, find that they must write down rapidly whatever they have to say, then by revision fill up the gaps and round out the incomplete parts; still others fall so far short of expressing their purpose the first time, that they must cast aside what they have done and begin again, this time, of course, with their purpose more definitely worked out in their own minds. But, whatever adaptation it may be necessary to make, the way in all its essentials remains unchanged. In some proportion there must be