Editor, THE WRITER:

In the September number of THE WRITER there are two references to "inspiration": Nalbro Bartley saying that she achieved success by "hard work - very little of what one is apt to call inspiration," and Mrs. Hughes saying that "inspiration . . . does n't come every day, nor can it be coaxed."

I don't know, personally, either Nalbro Bartley or Mrs. Hughes, but I am confident that the hard work of which Nalbro Bartley speaks is the hard work of so controlling "inspiration" as to be able to let herself write and not the hard work of actual writing; and I believe that most other professional writers will agree with me when I say that Mrs. Hughes's last phrase is not true for them.

I think that the emphasis on the technic of writing, which is general in the teaching of writing, is more harmful than helpful to the young writer. Emphasis on form needs a corresponding emphasis on the subjective side of writing. Given, of course, an ordinary mastery of his materials — that is, of the language in which he is writing — the writer's task is almost entirely subjective. I really don't know a writer who does n't write by what may be called "inspiration," for lack of a better term. As Rebecca West says of herself and her friends, "the Talent . . . is apt to be localized in the right hand, not above the wrist. [The writer] never knows more than vaguely what he thinks about a subject until he comes to write about it. He never remembers

what he has noticed in a scene until he comes to describe it."

This does n't mean that one can't learn to write. It does n't mean that writing is a gift from the gods. I'm not referring to the "inspiration" which is meant by those admirers who are always asking the professional writer: "Do you write by inspiration, or do you just write ?" The writer questioned is inclined at first to see nothing but humor in the query, but I have lately been watching the efforts of a young writer, and I find that this mistaken idea of "inspiration," as a mystic thing, and of "work" as a necessary one, is a serious handicap to her. When I think of the thousands of eager and desperate endeavorers who must be struggling as she has done, I do most sincerely wish that some one would tell them what "inspiration" is, and how to have it and use it.

The result of teaching young writers this distinction between "work" and "inspiration", combined with the teacher's over-emphasis on technic in form, is that beginners waste years of effort and agony in an attempt to write by mental hard labor - which can't be done.

Editor, THE WRITER:

So Telling Tales died. They had a rotten habit of refusing a script even when but a cent was due. I had two of my scripts to go to the dead letter office because only a cent was due. It took three months for the script to work back to me, and cost in all something like 30c. So Telling Tales could not hang on even after saving all these stamps. Oh, Ho, Hum; yes, yes.

Mr. Kimball's articles are extremely interesting. I am anxious for this next article "Working conditions." A few writers declare they can write concentrate in a boiler shop. I would give my right arm for that kind of brain. The great reason I have remained in the rear as a short story writer is, I have never been able to get even two hours of absolute quiet. This year I shall start a new order of things, writing from twelve to three A. M.

S. E. P. do not send out more personal letters

than rejection slips, as stated. I have sent them stuff not so bad; it sold in other offices, and nothing ever came from them but that eternal stiff, hard, icy slip; printed by the millions to hand out to the fair as well as the beastly rotten script. And I have sent them much. They are like Munsey. I am eternally hearing of the angel-like Bob Davis. That fellow never once sent me a personal letter. And that when I have personal letters from almost every big magazine in America. Allstory says it is hard to write what they want. I never heard of Allstory winning any stars in best short stories. And I could not read an Allstory if I tried all night. Truck driver's stuff. Munsey magazine gets over some pretty fair stories. The first person-"My Love Affairs" is taking the day. Where are you, girls? We men are up in the air.

Editor, THE WRITER:

"Now," said I, "this can't go on!"

I had opened the big green book that has been sacred to letters from those mysterious people, editors, containing criticisms and notices of acceptances since I began writing. It had done very nicely at first but it was n't doing at all nicely now. In five years or so your collection grows in spite of yourself, and my "scrap-book" method was beginning to be a failure for all parties concerned. The green book itself was losing all pretention to the shape a book should possess, the letters in it were in danger of becoming - well, shabby, and I was in a maze when I wanted to refer to a special letter I knew must be in the jungle somewhere!

It does n't sound especially business-like, I confess, and I was ashamed of it. I sat down and looked at that green book with half its contents tumbling out, and hunted around in my mind for some other method. Of course I wanted to keep the letters, even though some of them were n't exactly complimentary. I found it, but I'd like to warn all other beginners away from the snare of a scrap-book. It gave me occupation, getting things safely out of a book into which they've been firmly pasted, and rearranging them. You may not adopt my method, but please, please don't use a "scrap-book!"

Perhaps five years from now this new method will fail me also, and perhaps you have a superior one, but this is mine:

My manuscripts are kept in letter-files, indexed according to title. Accepted and promising stories in one group, those that need re-working in another. The pages of each manuscript are held together by a strong paper-clip. Under this was slipped the correspondence, flattering or otherwise, referring to that particular story. It is a good plan to keep these letters in their own envelopes — unless they have accompanied a returned story! But even so, one envelope can accommodate more than one letter. The letters are arranged according to date, no matter if the first one you see informs you that "This is a sermonette with a very trite theme," when you would much rather give the letter which says that this "is a charming story, and I am enclosing our check," the place of honor!

Of course this method fills the files a bit sooner, but it is a relief (at least it was to me!) to have all the data concerning a manuscript and the manuscript itself securely together, in a convenient place.

Speaking of data. When a manuscript is accepted the fact, the date, the magazine and the price are entered with the red portion of my ribbon on the first page of my own copy, and when it is published that date is added. Thus I have pretty complete information regarding every manuscript in my file. Helen E. Waite.

New Milford, N. J.

I was very much interested in looking over the March, 1926, issue of THE WRITER which appears to contain no end of good material. I would like, however, to make a comment on the galley proof corrections shown on page 76. Now it is all very well to have inspiration and anyone's work can be improved, even after it is in print. There are of course writers who cannot resist the temptation to rewrite every page they turn out, but it seems that there should be an end-somewhere.

A typewriter costs about $100.00. Mergenthaler

Roger Searle.

linotype machines cost several thousand dollars. For this reason it would appear that the place to edit copy is after it has been typewritten on a typewriter and not after it has been set up on the linotype machine.

Today the general cry is that printing matter of all kinds is priced too high. Is it small wonder then when authors insist on editing copy on galley proofs instead of on the first and second drafts of manuscripts? Fred B. Jacobs.

Editor, Abrasive Industry

matic power, both of the construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts of a novel. My introductory chapter was pure description, though there was good material in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at Berlin something led me to read it to George (G. H. Lewes). He was struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted indeed, disbelieved in my possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to think that I might as well try some time what I could do in fiction; and by-and-by, when we came back to England, and I had greater success than he ever expected in other kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to see how far my mental power would go toward production of a novel was strengthened.

He began to say very positively: "You must try and write a story," and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. I deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work that does not present itself as absolute duty.

But one morning as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze and I imagined myself writing a story of which the title was "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton." I was soon wide awake again and told G. He said, "What a capital title!" And from that time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story.

good enough we would send it to Blackwood; but G. thought the more probable result was that I should have to lay it aside and try again. When we returned to Richmond I had to write my article on "Silly Novels" and my review of Contemporary Literature for the Westminster (Gazette), so that I did not begin my story till September 22. After I had begun it, as we were walking in the park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of the plan for writing a series of stories, containing sketches drawn from my own observation, and calling them, "Scenes from Clerical Life," opening with Amos Barton. .

The story was begun September 22 and finished November 5. It was sent by Lewes to the editor of Blackwood's Magazine, Lewes pretending that it was submitted to him by a friend of his. Blackwood greeted it with enthusiasm. "Amos Barton" was begun in the January number of the magazine, 1857. Blackwood paid George Eliot about $250 for the work.

LEA. "How long have I wanted to write?" says Fanny Heaslip Lea (Mrs. Hamilton Agee). "Ever since I can remember, I believe. I know I was barely seven when I wrote my first story infantile rubbish! When I reached Newcomb College I was sure I was going to be a writer."

After a post-gradaute course in English at Tulane, Mrs. Agee began work in her first position on the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Her first accepted story sold for thirty dollars to a magazine that ceased publication the following month. Shortly after that Mrs. Agee began to do syndicate work. Her contract called for stories of young love, not more than one thousand words in length. "Young love cannot tell itself in one thousand words, so I learned the art of condensation," she explained. Stories of young love have ever been her favorites. "Perhaps that accounted for my rapid acceptances," she tells you, "for love stories are staples. There's a new lover of love stories born every minute."

Her stories now are sold in outline form

months before they are written, but she knows the work of writing and cutting and revising. Her hours are much more exacting than those of many a business man. Every day from nine until one finds her at her typewriter. Nothing is permitted to interfere with these hours; locked in her study she maps out and writes her stories. She is a believer in system. Once she thought that the desire to write and a typewriter comprised the essentials; now she believes a story must be as definitely patterned as a dress.

Four hours of uninterrupted work usually result in four typewritten pages, a bit over 1,500 words. Each day she reads the story from the very beginning, revises and changes before going on. A story of unusual length takes two or three weeks in the writing, and consequently undergoes from fourteen to twenty-one revisions. Beatrice Cosgrove, in New Orleans Times-Picayune.

MONTGOMERY.-Lucy Maud Montgomery got a package of seeds in payment for the first story she ever sold. She was then seventeen years old. For two lean years afterward she got nothing but rejection slips with her returned manuscripts, which were mostly written on the back of postoffice forms, of which her father, who was Postmaster, had an ample supply and, which came back to her in the postoffice without attracting public attention, so that she had courage to send them out again and again. Soon after her nineteenth birthday, however, she received a check of five dollars for a short story, and after that her stories gradually found a market. Finally, the editor of a Sunday School weekly asked her to write a seven-chapter serial for him, and looking over the note-book in which she had jotted down "Ideas" she found this entry:

"Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy; by mistake a girl is sent to them." That was the beginning of "Anne of Green Gables." As the story was developed, it became too long for the Sunday School publisher, and so Miss Montgomery tried the publishing houses. The manuscript was rejected by six publishers, and when L. C. Page & Co. accepted it Miss Montgomery was so discouraged that she says if the book had been rejected again the manuscript would have gone into the waste-basket.

WILLSIE. Honoré Willsie (Mrs. William Morrow) trying for a long time in vain, after leaving college, to sell a five-thousand-word story, finally got some encouragement from S. S. McClure, who told her that he would buy the story if she would boil it down acceptably. She spent three weeks reducing it, and he paid her ten dollars for it and ordered a story a week, which she wrote for fifty weeks at the same price.

The manuscript of her first novel was returned by the Appletons, and she did nothing with it until some years later, when the editor of Adventure asked if she knew any one who had a good story. Recalling the story she had written, she started to outline the plot, when to her surprise he finished up the outline for her, ending with the astounding declaration that he had been with the Appletons when her manuscript was submitted, that the manuscript had been returned by mistake, that the publishers had no record of her address and that they had been trying to get track of her and the manuscript ever since. He paid her nine hundred dollars for the story. Her second novel Mrs. Morrow sold on a hurry call to one of the publishers who had previously rejected it.