WILLIAM H. HILLS, Consulting Editor

JOHN GALLISHAW

MARGARET GORDON BERTHA W. SMITH

"I

ROBERT HILLYER BURGES JOHNSON

HAVE stopped giving advice to young writers," a well known author told me the other day. He was a genial, friendly sort; his statement did not seem to be characteristic, and I pressed him for a reason.

"In the first place, there is the danger of accusation of plagiarism, which is almost as bad for the writer's reputation as proof of it. There are a limited number of plots and situations to be treated in fiction. If I read a large number of manuscripts, inevitably I should write something resembling one of them in some respect, and what a howl would go up from the youngster who felt that I had copied his idea! I have a good reputation to protect and I can't be blamed for exercising due care that it be not placed in jeopardy. But there is a more personal reason. Almost all young writers these days seem to be money-grubbers. They all try to appear sophisticated and blasé about their work. They assume that writing is only a bag of tricks; that a knowledge of boiler-plate technique, rather than having something to say, is the chief attribute of a successful

writer. What on earth is the use of trying to find a short cut to say something effectively when you have nothing to say? I tell them that writing is primarily moving the emotions of readers; it can't be done if the writer has none himself, or if he covers what he has with false cynicism."

He is absolutely right, of course. The successful writer is always a strong individualist and usually a fearless one. A man who hasn't anything in himself that he wants to bring to the world will profit more by hiring himself out to someone who has. He belongs in advertising. Yet, even there, he will find himself appealing to emotion; he will discover that he needs a certain genuine fervor even to persuade people to buy what they need. If an advertising copy writer finds it difficult to be blasé in his attitude towards his copy, what of the fiction writer who is selling not automobiles or soap but his own individuality?

Too many writers want to eat at the officers' mess, but shudder at the thought of going into the field with troops. Vanity and cupidity are often the propelling motives be

hind writers. They are destructive of any opportunity for substantial success. Honest, passionate striving for leadership is the most important requirement for creative literary work that will reach a large enough group of people regularly enough to provide a fair living to the writer.

There is a foolish opinion abroad that a man cannot do his best work in writing for the large-circulation media. It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. About the best way to get a line on the quality of the ambition of a writer is to find out what he really thinks of The Saturday Evening Post. Of course, those who write from motives of vanity and cupidity have set it as their goal. They would rather appear there than anywhere else. It pays the top of the market for stories and it carries the names of its authors to more people than any other magazine. But others say, "There are not three million intelligent people in the country. A writer must have to write down to his readers to reach that number. I will not degrade my talents by writing anything but the best of which I am capable." What utter bosh and nonsense!

If they had said: "The Saturday Evening Post is deliberately trying to reach a low order of intelligence," I should have disagreed with them, but I should have considered that they were entitled to their own opinion. The broad statement that a writer may expect to reach a large number of readers by giving anything but the best that is in him is a plain fallacy. Do we not give to millions of children of adolescent age and immature mental development the great classics of the past, enjoyed as well by the most mature and intelligent minds? Either the whole world system of education is wrong or such a tenet is false.

Of course, this much is true: each day has its own familiar vocabulary. A writer schooled in the classics may be forced to go through some mental agony to find expression for his message in words that carry clearly to the modern reader, but that is only a matter of

vocabulary. Would you wail because your novel, printed in English, has no sale in France? From one point of view, all writing is only translation of thought. Generally speaking, any thought which cannot be translated into language understood by the millions is faddist, lacking the essential quality of permanence.

Of course, the writing enjoyed by the millions is not all worthy of preservation or necessarily great, yet it has far more chance of permanence than that written alone for the elite. What bestrides the divisions of interest among millions of present day writers probably has in it some of the qualities which will enable it to bestride the divisions of interest between our generation and the next.

Contrary to the prevalent belief, the successful writer for the millions is definitely "writing up" to his readers. He is trying just as hard to get breadth of interest as another sort of writer is striving for the bizarre. Which of the two objects is more worth striving for is a matter of personal opinion, but there is no doubt that the first is more lucrative. Most writers who have successfully expanded the appeal of their work have arrived at their success by a gradual promotion and they have not been ashamed to appeal in the beginning to readers of lesser sophistication. If a man is honestly striving for leadership, he need not be ashamed to attempt to command the interest of any type of reader whatever. A certain number of writers believe it beneath them to attempt to write for any but a few of the most sophisticated magazines. Even though they are told that this market is badly oversold, they refuse to try any other media. Their ideas are too precious for the mob. They are perfectly willing to swap stories at the officers' mess, but take command of a bunch of raw rookies of inferior intelligence - never! But nothing will probably ever be said to persuade them that their arrogant assumption of virtue is quite as unpleasant as the frank commercialism of the money-grubbers.

Editor, the Forum:

Realism, as writers commonly use the term, is the opposite of romanticism. As to their relative merits in relation to writing, I have nothing here to say. What concerns me is that the realism of the realists is such an incidental, perhaps one may be pardoned for saying it, usually such a superficial thing.

Realism, as it is practiced, consists of taking a small cross-section of life and then following out the minutia of it with painstaking, often painsgiving detail. The thing, when it is well done, has its value, and on the whole I prefer it to the common run of romanticism. Yet I wonder that a larger, pardon the awkwardness of it, a realer realism, does not find more place with writers. Perhaps the trouble is that it has as yet so little place with publishers and readers. But outside of fiction it is beginning to come into its own. I mean the realism of a world which does not, in fact, consist at all of isolated incidents or cross sections of this and that, but is a very big and a very important totality.

What is the first thing you do when you really want to get hold of a city? You climb up to the top of the highest hill, or take an elevator to the top floor of the highest building, and survey the city as a whole, to get the "lay" of it.

But you say there is no way of doing that with the human life of a city. There you have to get next to individuals, or at least "types," by which we

often mean outstanding eccentricities of sub-normal or super-normal individuals.

Nevertheless the two biggest things that are happening in the world just now are the sense of life as mass, and the sense of human history as process. Geography has helped us to realize the one, the world, or rather the earth as a whole. Economics is helping us to realize the other, the movement of civilization, which we are beginning to understand as a river and not the private mill-pond of a sect or a class.

Is n't it time that writers were beginning to reflect these two supreme discoveries of the modern world, and that realism became real enough to get beyond microscopic minutia-ness and take account of the mightiest of all dramas, the drama of the worldwide, age-long evolution of things as they are.

Or must we still wait with Kipling to deal with the "God of things as they are" as our swan-song, our "L'Envoi," wherein we sing of an age "when earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are all twisted and dried, when the oldest picture has faded, and the youngest critic has died?" Isn't that too much after the manner of the preachers who have always been relegating reality here to one side in the interests of this or that hypothesis about heaven or hell? What is the matter with a real realism now and here, a realism as big, as moving, as alive as life itself? Robert Whitaker.

Los Angeles, Calif.

Editor, the Forum:

There must be countless new, interesting, and useful things with which you are in daily contact that would interest our readers, and our rates, I think, would be much more satisfactory to you than formerly.

Remember that your ideas may be worth money and it is so easy to capitalize the interesting things you see. True we can't use pictures of freaks of nature, advertising devices, or queer accidents, because there are so many of them, but new time and labor saving kinks, photographs and circulars of the

No one likes to lose a friend, you know, and so I am wondering why we have not heard from you recently.

many clever devices now appearing in the stores may easily yield you a good profit with little effort. The magazine itself is the best guide as to what we use. You do not have to be a skilled writer and, indeed, some of our best contributors never use a typewriter. Sometimes a brief description accompanied by a rough sketch from which our artists can make a drawing is enough. Photographs with human figures are always best, but often an advertising circular will answer our needs.

If for any reason we have not been able to use any of the material you sent us in the past, do not be discouraged but try again -now- today-because we are always in the market for things that will interest our readers.

With all of the Season's best wishes, I am

The writer has received many personal requests from editors for material, which is nothing unusual in itself, but here we have a form letter evidently going to the "missed" contributors, who must represent a great number, presumably, since Popular Mechanics draws manuscripts from all points of the world. It is easy enough to keep check on a few writers. Popular Mechanics requires a great variety of material; there must be a constant flow; the need is never-ending. The editors do receive volumes and volumes of articles and items, and that is just why it piques one how a great publication like Popular Mechanics keeps track of its hordes of writers, then reminding the "missed."

Aside from indicating an interesting sidelight to the writing business, this letter of Popular Mechanics reveals the precise character of the stuff it needs, being particularly encouraging to the young and new contributor. Frank V. Faulhaber.

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Editor, the Forum:

Out of confusion I have evolved a system by which it is possible for a busy wife and mother to work progressively on a story and make every spare half-hour count.

When the plot first presents itself I scribble rapidly the general idea of the whole story. I give it a name, no matter how absurd, and I usually make out a cast of characters, too.

Afterward, I type on white paper all the parts which "seem to write themselves" and are in fairly good order in my mind. But wherever "my engine stalls" or something "cramps my style," I stop typing and take sheets of yellow paper on which I again write in long hand; leaving wide spaces to permit of elaboration, erasing, and bringing ideas to the surface. Along the margins are dotted questions, notes, or any helpful suggestions. If the ending of the story is clear at all, I continue my typing of that part.

Every page is numbered straight through, regard

Editor, the Forum:

less of color, so that it is possible to follow the thread of the story in spite of the knots and tangles on the yellow sheets.

The story thus constructed is put into a folder and labelled with its nickname. It is kept close at hand as long as it clamors for attention. Whenever opportunity offers, I take out a yellow sheet and concentrate on that particular problem which may be thought out on the train (I am a suburbanite) or done over entirely in a public library, or whipped into shape while dinner cooks.

After a while that set of yellow pages is ready for typing and so the story steadily assumes form.

When it is all white it may be revised or "set away to mellow," or it may be ready to send out on its voyaging.

This method is suggested only as a good substitute for the one of waiting for those wonderful, long uninterrupted days which never come.

Larchmont, N. Y.

A literary production, we are led to imagine, may be realism or it may be romance. It may be poetry or prose. It may even be that hybrid which is neither prose nor poetry but which its devotees love to call free verse and which is yet, like the Indian who is named for what he is or what he does, to receive its final cognomen if so be it survives long enough to acquire one.

Madeleine Swift Auld.

bution to literature." We get the book and find in it no "elevation" nor "vigor" nor "catholicity of We find literature defined by one lexicographer as "Productions such as are marked by elevation, vigor, and catholicity of thought, purity and grace of style, and artistic construction." But just what is literature? We read of some new book as "a great contrithought," no "purity of style" nor "artistic construction"; but we do find plenty of rot about sex

complexes, the immoral meanderings of the newly rich or the degenerate rich (these meanderings as old as the human race and now hailed as signs of present-day decadence or advancement according to the point of view of the author) but lacking in everything within the purview of the definition quoted.

Often these "great contributions to literature" are, frankly, stories of the open and notorious lewdness of the principal characters, portraying the lowest in human depravity, featuring the purely animal instincts and frequently garnished with bald profanity.

We read of "literature," "poor literature," "good literature," and "real literature." Almost everything, in fact, at one time or another and by one critic or another, has been called "good literature" and "real literature"; but there must be a quality, a something, possibly indefinable, certainly not understandable by your "humble correspondent," which distinguishes "real literature" from what the masters have built into the classics, a something too illusive

to be caught and impaled with a prosaic definition but perfectly attuned to the naturally acute literary sense of its lovers and sponsors.

Hoping to get some light on what is now considered the best by good authorities, I have recently read several of the prize stories widely advertized, and by prominent publishers at that, as "real literature." These books are written in very ordinary language as to style and construction and the rest; but what they do excel in is detail of sordidness and unblushing or only slightly veiled lewdness.

Is it prudery to expect or look for cleanness in literature? Is it "goody-goody" to think that a story need not contain profanity, vulgarity, and obscenity in order to be realistic? Does real literature involve the description, the featuring of the sordid, vulgar, and mean in the lives of degenerates and perverts and of the naturally vicious and immoral?

Sleepy Eye, Minn.

LeRoy G. Davis.

Editor, the Forum:

Eugene Field, with his wide experience in journalism, was eminently fitted to give advice to young writers. The young reporter who happened to be so fortunate as to win Field's friendship during his creative period on the Chicago Daily News, soon found that in this man of wide reading he had a helpful friend. Field was at all times a lovable acquaintance. He was generous in notable ways. He would pour out the riches of his mind and heart to his friends in exchange for a little appreciative comradeship. Such comradeship he treasured most highly.

Here is some of the advice that he once gave to young writers:

"A young writer cannot be too careful in his choice of words. Eternal vigilance is the price of a correct English style. Colloquialisms are not to be fought out of existence they cannot be. They are exceedingly useful and at times they are exceedingly effective, for the same reason that the introduction by adroit public speakers of homely phrases or popular proverbs into their speeches invariably catches the ear and wins the heart of the audience. But a writer must know his weapons before he can use them with effect. It is brutal of him to employ a bludgeon when the services of a rapier are demanded,

and he exhibits unpardonable selfishness who fritters away time at fencing when only a club can achieve his purpose.

"There are now, we think, 120,000 words in the English language. The possibilities in the use of synonyms are remarkable, and we should say that to the study of synonyms the young writer should apply himself diligently. To the newspaper writers we are looking with solicitude and hope, for the reason that outside of the columns of the press our literature does not seek to make any progress at all. Our literature of the press is, on the other hand, constantly improving, and in the last ten years that improvement has been marked."

Field was constantly harping on precision in the use of words. As a student of several languages he had received unusual training in word meanings. That is why there is weight in his warning to young writers not to take the English language as they find it in common and vulgar usage. "It is their duty," he wrote, "to study, test, and prove words, to retain that which is good and cast away that which is bad in speech. In the performance of that duty they shall find delight and profit and therefore shall duly win permanent benefits for mankind." George F. Paul.

Chicago, Ill.