In these talks we have constantly gone from small things to greater things, from words to sentences, to character, to action, to plot. It has been as if we started to build a building and had nothing but bricks to start with. This would seem an odd way to build a building, but it was doubtless the way the first building was built. Building in this way is synthetic. We are putting things together, and the builder is learning by doing. If we had reversed the process and gone from large units to small, working from a plan, we should have run the danger of becoming theorists, of being scientific and analytic instead of syn

No. 5.

thetic and artistic. We see on every side men who know how everything ought to be done, but who can do nothing themselves. This is a pit-fall we want to avoid.

Working as we have from small units to large, we have almost reached our largest unit. In our last talk we learned that the total action of the story constituted its plot and that if this action were given in skeleton form it would be the scenario or synopsis of the story. If we could reduce this scenario to a single sentence, or even a single word, we should have the theme of the story, or what the story was about, and this is our largest unit. If King Lear were called "A Father's Vanity," or Macbeth "Ambition," or Othello "Jealousy," the themes would be contained in the titles.

It is interesting in looking over a story we have written to find that it illustrates some almost abstract idea, and now that we have learned to write it is fun to take an abstract idea and illustrate it with a story. We can do it either way, so long as we keep constantly in mind that we must not allow our characters to be false to themselves in illustrating our idea.

The academic way of constructing a story is first to get the theme, then assemble the characters, give them appropriate action, write a scenario of the story, and last of all, do the actual composition of the story. I believe that in most cases this process is not followed by professional writers. Some writers write a scenario simply to disregard it. Others have only a general idea of the end of the story when they begin it, and still others write without knowing what is coming next, so that

they are as much surprised as the reader is. Which method we may employ will depend on our temperament. We should adopt the method that succeeds best with our selves. If we have a precise and intellectual mind, it will be a great satisfaction to us to have a chart to sail by, a scenario that we can follow as closely as we wish.

If we are essentially a person of feeling, and I mean by feeling not emotion so much as that instinctive quality which has been called inspiration, we shall be happier to have our story flow right off our pen. There is danger in working in this way. We may have a good beginning and a poor ending, perhaps, or no ending at all. Or we may finish a story that is excellent in its parts but that does not hang together. Our intellect should always be on the job as a sort of policeman to keep us to the path. I can illustrate what I mean by comparing the creative power in us to a horse and the intellectual or critical faculty to its driver. The horse is the motive power, disastrous if not restrained and guided, but the driver without the horse is of no use at all.

All writers have a strong sense at times of inspiration, interspersed with periods when they have to work everything out with their reason. Amy Lowell has described the process in one of her lectures. An idea would come to her for a poem and then she would n't think of it again for a year, perhaps. It would be growing in her subconsciousness without her knowledge. Then unexpectedly it would come to the surface and seek expression and get itself written almost of itself. She fancifully imagined that an imp dictated it to her. Places would come in the poem which the imp refused to dictate, and she would have to work over these spots and rewrite them until she got them to match the rest of her poem as well as she was able. She owns the original manuscript of Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes" and what interests her in it most is how beautifully the imp dictated it to him until he reached a certain stanza. At this point the interlineations and corrections on the manuscript show that Keats had just as much trouble as herself. It might be said of Amy Lowell that she is an indefatigable and

regular worker, so the use of inspiration is not incompatible with the professional writer's life.

Having gone from the word to the theme, from the smallest unit to the largest unit, we can now take a sort of survey of any story, see it in a bird's-eye view. In reading it over, we can ask whether it produces a unified effect and if not, we can lop off extraneous things even though they are charming in themselves. There are plenty more where they came from. In following the action through we can discover whether our curve of intensity sags any on its way to the climax. We can find out whether we have held our tone throughout the story, for it would be obviously out of tone to introduce Broadway slang, for example, in a romantic story set in ancient Babylon.

We may even discover unexpected qualities; for, while we often write worse than we thought we did, often also we write better than we knew. One of the qualities that we may show in our work is symbolism, in which an inanimate object takes on extraordinary characteristics. If the story, for example, were a story of the struggle of a man to save his farm from the encroachment of sand dunes, the sand dunes might take on almost a human or a diabolic character, as if they were an added character in the story. The most successful novel of Ernest Poole's was "The Harbor," and I believe this was true largely because he used New York harbor in a symbolic sense. It kept coming back into the novel under various aspects like the variations on a theme in music, and I would point out that the success of repetitions in literature depends on the variations. We have the pleasure of recognizing an old friend in a new guise. It is very easy to work in symbolism and repetition, but used simply as a device it has no inner vitality and is bad art.

Little things we shall now discover in our work possibly that we give every non a retinue of at least two adjectives and every verb a retinue of at least two adverbs. Adjectives and adverbs are all very well. When we want to, we can give a noun a whole string of adjectives, but as we write we shall learn that everything does not have to be modified

and that a noun alone or a verb alone has a certain simplicity and strength.

We shall find, perhaps, that our conversation does n't fit in with our descriptions, that we lose our tune when our characters talk ; but by working with this defect in mind, we shall soon be able to have our characters talk in colloquial language without losing the tune of the story as a whole. Again we may think that it is n't proper for us to repeat "he said," so we may have variations and say "he surmised," "he queried," "he responded," and so To do this to some extent is all right, but we must remember that the word "said" is merely a little tag to denote conversation, and it can be repeated without any harm.

on.

We shall also find there are conventional stage directions in a story, as for example :

"Yes," the young lady answered, bursting into tears.

"No," said the burglar, breaking off the ash of his cigar.

It is good to avoid conventional phrases of this sort and of all sorts. A character has n't got to be doing something at the same moment he is saying something. Go through your story and take out expressions that are commonplace and hackneyed.

Sometimes you will find that you tell a story almost entirely by means of conversation, so that the story will be like a series of scenes, or a play. Other times you will find that your story has n't a word of conversation in it.

Sometimes you will start a story with conversation, sometimes with description, sometimes with an objective act.

You will be interested to find the different ways stories come to you. Sometimes an incident observed or read about will suggest a whole story. Sometimes a character seen or heard of will rush into your imagination, Sometimes a carrying his story with him.

scene will invoke a story-you will want to write a story that will convey to the reader the spirit of some given place. Sometimes a title itself will contain the story, as a bud contains the flower.

In proportion as you have the artistic temperament, you will not allow your personal views to color your stories. You may in. your civic capacity be president of a society to prohibit tea-drinking in the United States, but you must forget this when you step into your study to write. You must be fair to your characters, even though they happen to be teadrinkers.

You may use your writing gift for purposes of propaganda if you wish to. Few weapons are as effective for this purpose as art, and any well written novel designed to correct a definite abuse is bound to be a money-maker if the abuse is sufficiently unpopular; but this will not be pure art.

seem

At first thought, writing and gardening may somewhat dissociated, but in reality they combine very happily. In this article I shall try to establish the fact, and my material has not been taken from books, nor from the experiences of others. It is from my own experience in writing and gardening, covering several years.

Besides myself, I have two others to support by writing, and you all know how old Hi Cost O. Living sinks his teeth into a writer's

earnings these days. He surely bites deep. Having this thought in mind before I started to grow a garden, I feared that by reason of taking some of the time which otherwise would be given to writing articles, my gardening operations would seriously cut down proceeds from my writing. This proved fallacious reasoning. In fact, after checking up at the end of the year the good things that the garden has given me, I am convinced that it increased the proceeds from writing, not to

mention the really big item- reduction in grocery bills.

The garden did take some of the time which otherwise I would have devoted to writing, but not only did it relieve my pocket-book, but it materially boosted my writing. In my opinion, no writer should buckle down to his desk for long hours in the effort to turn out daily a fixed volume of words. By so doing he places quantity above quality, and quality, in the long run, is what counts - better one short article of A-1 quality than two or more of doubtful quality. When a writer's ideas clog and jam and his brain rebels, then is the time to turn his attention to something entirely different - to allow his exhausted brain cells to re-charge themselves for another writing session tomorrow.

In respect to health, a garden certainly helps a writer in his business. It affords him a chance to change from mental to muscular exercise. It gives him the opportunity to get on - speaking terms with Mother Nature-fills his lungs with fresh, pure air and sweeps the cobwebs from his mental machinery. When again he tackles writing, his fist is propelled over the page by a brain that is ahead of it, instead .of lagging in the rear. Yes, from the health angle, a garden is a tonic, which taken in daily doses, produces increased ability to write.

From another angle, the garden is a source of material for practical gardening articles, for which there are many markets with farm and garden journals. If the writer-gardener keeps his eyes open and his mind alert, he will learn things which will be of value to other garden devotees about seeds and their germination, fertilizers, soils and the best way to manage and cultivate them and much about gardening in general. Farm-paper editors stand ready to exchange checks for the facts one digs up, if such facts are properly prepared for the instruction of their readers.

During the late war, while advertising manager for a large wholesale seed firm, I wrote a series of twenty-five articles on backyard gardens. The series was easily placed with fifty leading newspapers throughout the

United States. Each article was practical and timely, and was written solely from a knowledge of gardening acquired years previously. I mention this merely to show that any writer can gather the makings for many a good article while he manipulates the hoe or weeder.

The garden that I grew last year, as an accessory to the writing business, was considerably less than one-quarter acre in size. Fertilizer and seed cost about nine dollars. Labor I do not count, for many times while using the hoe I dug up, with the weeds, material for articles. I cannot give figures on the quantity of fresh vegetables available during the growing season, for I kept no record. Certain it was that we had plenty, of many different kinds and gave some to the neighbors. A rough guess of their market value is fifty dollars.

Enough corn, beans, spinach, tomatoes, peas, beets, carrots, pickles, chile-sauce, and catsup were canned to supply the family for eight months. In terms of quarts canned, the figures are 133. At a safe estimate the value is again fifty dollars. Here are an even hundred dollars cash value for vegetables, canned or uncanned. The actual expense being nine dollars, it leaves ninety-one dollars profits. Hold though, there is some inspiration for articles to be credited to the garden. Say the value is twenty-five dollars, as inspiration. This makes a grand total of $116 profits.

The time actually taken from my writing averaged less than one hour daily. So I figure that this hour was put in more profitably in the garden than in struggling to keep the old brain working under protest.

How can one learn to garden, you say? There's nothing in the world so easy. There are the agricultural bulletins on all phases of gardening, prepared by the United States Department of Agriculture. There are books at the library. There are garden magazines and farm papers, and seed catalogs. There are garden clubs, and there is the professional gardener, always glad to tell you what he knows. Every package of seeds bears adequate instructions for planting. There is no dearth of information.

Not all writers, of course, live where they

can have a garden, but many do, either on their land or on that of a neighbor. To still others the money-saving feature may not appeal. It is to the young writer fighting his way upward, to whom stamps and stationery loom as expense items, that a garden will prove a valuable ally. Aside from the joy of having fresh vegetables in summer and satisfying canned vegetables in winter, the garden will fit you physically and mentally to be a

better writer, will provide inspiration for articles and stories, and will deal a body blow to the high cost of living. If you take a spark of interest in the garden, and treat it right, there will be no rejection slips from it - and fewer from your writing. Pretty good reasons, do you not think, why writing and gardening go well together?

R. Gilbert Gardner.

WAREHOUSE POINT, Conn.

Just how long should an editor ask a contributor to wait for a decision on his manuscript? Here is a question vital to every writer who has had any experience in attempting to sell his wares in the general literary market.

One does not look for immediate decisions in the offices of the great weekly or monthly periodicals. Manuscripts sent there may be bid "good-bye" for a couple of months, perhaps; but it seems unnecessary for the average publication to keep a writer waiting nine or ten weeks for a decision on a brief article which is patently either acceptable or not acceptable.

The manuscript is the writer's product. By it he hopes to derive income. It represents to him potential cash. The longer an editor keeps it pigeon-holed before reaching a decision as to its acceptability, the longer the writer must wait before he can make another attempt to convert his story or article into

writer should be asked to make no greater sacrifice than the business man. His product, to him, is just as valuable as that of the mill is to the manufacturer. Speed in marketing means just as much to his efficiency program as it does to the sales management of a business firm. Unless he can make a reasonably rapid turn-over of his literary wares, his profits are not going to attain their potential size.

Aside from the moral and business principles involved, there is also enmeshed in this question of manuscript decision the element of courtesy. When one writes a letter, either of a business or personal nature, common courtesy entitles him to expect a reply within a brief time. Is it asking too much of editors at least to acknowledge the receipt of manuscripts, even though they are not in a position to pass immediate judgment on them? I think not. The contributor would then know, at any rate, that his article had reached its destination safely and was in line for consideration.

Contributors are the backbones of most magazines. Without them, there would be little for editors to do. Why not treat writers as real partners in the enterprise and not keep them waiting for weeks for a decision on a sales proposal? Such delay is n't tolerated in any other business. Why should it be in this business of writing? Charles E. Gallagher.

LOWELL, Mass.