T ought to be easy to write a book about

writing! One need only examine the successful writings of others, classify them under various familiar headings and look for common multiples, which would then immediately become rules. News writing, feature writing, short-story writing; essays, sketches, articles, -"exposition," "narration," "description,"

each of these terms may provide a chapter title in some textbook on composition. But the trouble is that successful writers take malicious pleasure in breaking rules. They view their literary activity as an art rather than a science, and they will not stay put. They persist in upsetting textbook schemes by writing things that do not classify at all; and somehow they get away with it.

But as a teacher of composition I must classify, or I shall die. At least let me say that all forms of writing are either creative or journalistic. Either they owe their impulse and their material to a well stored mind and a vivid imagination, or else to the desire to record and appraise objective facts. In the first field I may call my writer a poet, and in the second, a reporter or a critic. But just as I have contentedly established my two classes, someone says that my reporter is successful because of his poetic gifts, and my poet is praised for the accuracy and vi, idress with which he pictures his objective

How then may one teach rules and recipes for writing? Who knows any? Many prophets wise and foolish arise who would point a way; and some deliberately false prophets. Here is offered no chart with any royal road to literary success pricked upon it, but only the observations of one who is still puzzling after ten years of teaching "advanced composition."

In any classroom devoted to the practice of creative writing there dwells a spectre. Misty of outline it hovers about, not seen in clear definition by anyone, but touching with ghostly finger every task and every discussion. Its name is Inspiration. Young writers wait for its approval before they begin. Instructors meekly withdraw their demands at its behest. I might be most helpful to many student friends if I could exorcise this phantom, or materialize it!

Some years ago I was riding in a train with a poet, one whose sincerity of purpose I respect and admire. This classroom ghost was bothering me much at that time, and I had been trying vainly to lay him. "Tell me," I said suddenly to my poet, "were you ever inspired?" He took the question quite calmly. "Yes," he said, "if we can agree upon a definition." Then he told me this bit out of his own personal experience. He had lived for many years, he said, in a town where more than half of the population were negroes. This had led him to speculate about them, as his mind grew more mature, and to develop some philosophy of his own as to the tragedy of their present situation, the savagry of their background, and the hope that might lie in their future. He came to feel that perhaps

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Each new effort at classification back to the fact that writers of ever, sort in every field are using but one English and using it for their own purposes well or ill; facility in the use of it, and power of control over it as a keen or delicate tool, being common measures of their greatness.

their one great contribution to mankind might be a spiritual gift. All of this thinking had eventually slipped into the background of his mind.

One day as he was travelling in a Pullman a sudden flashing glimpse of that old speculation came to him, but now it was like a telegram in code. Perhaps the rhythm of the car wheels had got into his head; perhaps the porter came through the car. At any rate he found himself saying:

"Then I saw the Congo creeping through the black,

Winding through the forest with a golden. track."

Where it came from he did not know. "Call it ouija board stuff if you like," said he to me. "Anyhow," said the poet, "I was content with my poem. It summed up in condensed fashion all my philosophising about the negro. But if I put that couplet into type it would mean nothing whatever to those whose thoughts had not travelled the whole distance with mine. I must settle down to the plodding task of interpreting my vision. Sheer craftsmanship would then determine whether or not I could make others see what I had seen or feel what I had felt."

So in the final outcome his poem might be but two lines of inspiration, with one hundred lines or so of interpretation. And every true poet that ever lived has the same story to tell. Let Dante testify:

. . . And then I resolved," he says in the Vita Nuova, "that thenceforward I would choose for the theme of my writings only the praise of this most gracious being. But when I had thought exceedingly, it seemed to me that I had taken to myself a theme which was much too lofty, so that I dared not begin; and I remained during several days in the desire of speaking, and the fear of beginning. After which it happened, as I passed one day along a path which lay besides a stream of very clear water, that there came upon me a great desire to say

somewhat in rhyme; but when I began thinking how I should say it, methought that to speak of her were unseemly, unless I spoke to other ladies in the second person; which is to say, not to any other ladies; but only to such as are so called because they are gentle, let alone for mere womanhood. Whereupon I declare that my tongue spake as though by its own impulse, and said, 'Ladies that have intelligence in love.' These words I laid up in my mind with great gladness, conceiving to take them as my commencement."

My train companion and I talked more of this matter and agreed that a gift of poetic vision was not necessarily accompanied by the power to interpret. Probably some of the worst poetry ever published may be found between the covers of church hymnals. Yet among the poems there set down are some that have demonstrated the power to stir the hearts of multitudes through successive generations. Often in those old hymns one flashing line will stand out; all of the spiritual power of the hymn is compressed into its few words. It may not be the first line or the formal title, yet men remember the hymn by that one line and forget its context. That line embodied the whole vision of the old hymn writer; then when he tried to expand and interpret he failed in craftsmanship.

Emily Dickinson is a good example of the visionary who sets down her little glimpses of truth or beauty in the condensed forms in which they flashed into her mind, without effort to expand and interpret, probably without the ability to do so. Her poems will never be enjoyed by a multitude of readers because she never sought to reach the many. The few who enjoy will do so by reason of the fact that they are themselves supplying all of the expansion and interpretation.

To one of my day the word Inspiration is sure to have a scriptural association. So perhaps I can best say what I have to say by citing the story of Moses. The Hebrew legend has it that he received his early training in the wisest court circles of his time. The whole

body of knowledge of that day was at his disposal in the king's palace. Then he threw in his lot with his own people and joined the slaves in their revolt and exodus. They must have been a hopeless crowd of ignorant brutalized laborers, who started upon their migration utterly unequipped. According to the legend, Moses who had become their leader went up into a high mountain and was there for a long time, alone with his vision of God, in solitary communion with truth. While he was there, the people encamped below heard thunder and they said that it was God talking, but they could not understand. When the great leader came down he brought with him a body of laws that stand even today the tests of practical human application, in ethics, personal hygiene, sanitation, government.

Here were in very truth inspired writings. Three elements have equal share in their success. First of all was the prepared mind; just such educational preparation as was needed for writing of that sort. Then there was an active seeking for ideas, or at least a mental readiness; the mountain top, the period of solitude. Moses was not waiting for inspiration to come to him, but he climbed a hard road nine-tenths of the way to meet it. Finally came into play the power to translate his vision into terms the multitude would understand.

These young creative writers who prate of inspiration should seek three things: a background of mental training, adequate to the visions they seek; a mind receptive to flashing glimpses of truth or beauty; and last a power to interpret. As to the first, one classroom can give but a tiny modicum of the mental training they need. Any or all classrooms, outside activities, daily experiences, background, all must share responsibility for that.

crowded college schedule certainly is antagonistic to them. Lack of solitude and opportunity for quiet meditation must also discourage them. An unsympathetic attitude of associates toward the expression of halfformulated fancies would act as a deterrent. A general college tendency to encourage or even exalt criticism would be harmful, not perhaps if it were constructive criticism; yet it is almost impossible to encourage a habit of criticism in youthful minds and not have it generally destructive.

Psychologists tell us that these "inspired" flashes are uprushes from the subconscious mind. We know that the greater proportion of the mental work that we do is done subconsciously. Into that subliminal chamber go our unfinished tasks. Then while our conscious minds are busy with new problems, suddenly out from this other workshop flashes something more nearly complete than we had suspected we could produce. Creative writers tell us that this happens most frequently when the conscious mind is least on guard. Perhaps it has been drugged by coffee or sleep. Perhaps it is simply quiescent from fatigue. Authors, like professional orators or lecturers, find ways of deliberately harnessing this subconscious activity to each successive task. Prolific writers find it essential to set regular times for their creative writing. "I go to my desk at nine o'clock every morning," is the testimony of one of them, "whether I feel like writing or not. Even without ideas I must somehow start my pen going. In a short time some force takes control and I am producing copy." Another confesses that he has a way of calling upon this subconscious mind to pull him out of a mess. "If I have come to an impasse in my story, I let it go until night. Then when I am in bed and ready for sleep, with the light out, I arrange before my mind's eye the situation that is giving me trouble. Then I manage to get to sleep. In the morning I summon my characters before me and find that somehow their paths have become clear."

Every creative writer, even the most im