dorothea brande - the diamond's...

DOROTHEA BRANDE

Foreword by

JOHN GARDNER

A Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Bookpublished by

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONSNew York

A Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam BookPublished by G P Putnam s Sons

Publishers Since 1838200 Madison AvenueNew York NY 10016

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Brande, Dorothea Thompson, dateBecoming a writer

Reprint of the 1934 ed. published by Harcourt,Brace, New York

Bibliography p. 177Includes index

1 Fiction—Technique 2 Authorship I Title.PN3355B7 1981 808 3 80-53146

ISBN 0-87477-164-1

Copyright © 1934 byHarcourt, Brace & Company,

1961 by Gilbert I. Collins and Justin Brande.Foreword © 1981 by J. P. Tarcher Inc.

All rights reservedLibrary of Congress Catalog Card No 80- 53146

Design by John Brogna

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

For Two Josephines

Contents

Foreword by JOHN GARDNER 11

IN INTRODUCTION 19

1. THE FOUR DIFFICULTIES 25The Difficulty of Writing at All; The "One-BookAuthor"; The Occasional Writer; The UnevenWriter; The Difficulties Not in TechnicalEquipment.

2. WHAT WRITERS ARE LIKE 35Cultivating a Writer's Temperament; False andReal Artists; The Two Sides of a Writer; "Dissocia-tion" Not Always Psychopathic; Everyday Exam-ples of Dual Personality; The Slough of Despond.

3. THE ADVANTAGES OF DUPLICITY 45The Process of Story Formation; The "BornWriter"; Unconscious and Conscious; The TwoPersons of the Writer; The Transparent Barrier;Keep Your Own Counsel; Your "Best Friend and

Severest Critic"; The Right Recreation; Friendsand Books; The Arrogant Intellect; The Two SelvesNot at War; The First Exercise.

4. INTERLUDE: ON TAKING ADVICE 61Save Your Energy; Imagination Versus Will inChanging Habits; Displacing Old Habits; ADemonstration; The Right Frame of Mind.

5. HARNESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS 69Wordless Daydreams; Toward Effortless Writing;Double Your "Output."

6. WRITING ON SCHEDULE 75Engaging to Write; A Debt of Honor; Extending theExercise; Succeed, or Stop Writing.

7. THE FIRST SURVEY 81Reading Your Work Critically; The Pitfalls of Imita-tion; Discovering Your Strength; A Footnote forTeachers.

8. THE CRITIC AT WORK ON HIMSELF 89A Critical Dialogue; Be Specific in Suggestions;Correction After Criticism; The Conditions ofExcellence; Dictating a Daily Regime.

9. READINGS AS A WRITER 99Read Twice; Summary Judgment and DetailedAnalysis; The Second Reading; Points of Impor-tance.

10. ON IMITATION 105Imitating Technical Excellences; How to SpendWords; Counteracting Monotony; Pick Up FreshWords.

11. LEARNING TO SEE AGAIN 111The Blinders of Habit; Causes of Repetitiousness;Recapturing Innocence of Eye; A Stranger in theStreets; The Rewards of Virtue.

12. THE SOURCE OF ORIGINALITY 119The Elusive Quality; Originality Not Imitation;The "Surprise Ending"; Honesty, the Source ofOriginality ; Trust Yourself; "Your Anger and MyAnger"; One Story, Many Versions; Your Inaliena-ble Uniqueness; A Questionnaire.

13. THE WRITER'S RECREATION 131Busmen's Holidays; Wordless Recreation; FindYour Own Stimulus; A Variety of Time-Fillers.

14. THE PRACTICE STORY 137A Recapitulation; The Contagiousness of Style;Find Your Own Style; The Story in Embryo; ThePreparatory Period; Writing Confidently; AFinished Experiment; Time for Detachment; TheCritical Reading.

15. THE GREAT DISCOVERY 147The Five-Finger Exercises of Writing; The Root ofGenius; Unconscious, Not Subconscious; The

Higher Imagination; Come to Terms with the Un-conscious; The Artistic Coma and the Writer'sMagic.

16. THE THIRD PERSON, GENIUS 155The Writer Not Dual But Triple; The MysteriousFaculty; Releasing Genius; Rhythm, Monotony,Silence; A Floor to Scrub.

17. THE WRITER'S MAGIC 163X Is to Mind as Mind to Body; Hold Your MindStill; Practice in Control; The Story Idea as the Ob-ject; The Magic in Operation; Inducing the "Artis-tic Coma"; Valedictory.

IN CONCLUSION: SOME PROSAIC POINTERS 171Typewriting; Have Two Typewriters; Stationery;At the Typewriter: WRITE!; For Coffee Addicts;Coffee Versus Maté; Reading; Book and MagazineBuying.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

177

181

Foreword

It's an astonishing thing that Dorothea Brande'sBecoming a Writer should ever have fallen out ofprint, and a lucky thing it is now back in the lightwhere it belongs. The root problems of the writer,whether the writer is young or old, just startingout or much published, are no different todaythan in 1934, when Becoming a Writer was firstpublished. They do not have to do with "the tech-niques of writing fiction" — the subject matter ofall creative writing courses — and insofar as theroot problems never get mentioned, almost allcreative writing courses are for most people mostof the time failures. The root problems of thewriter are personality problems: He or she cannotget started, or starts a story well then gets lost orloses heart, or writes very well some of the time,badly the rest of the time, or writes brilliantly but

11

12 Becoming a Writer

after one superb story or novel cannot writeagain, or writes brilliantly while the creativewriting course lasts but after it is over can nolonger write. The root problems, in other words,are problems of confidence, self-respect, freedom:The writer's demon is imprisoned by the variousghosts in the unconscious.

Ms. Brande points out — with the delightfulwit we find everywhere in her book — that for thewriter suffering from uncertainty and self-doubt,writing teachers and books about writing, not tomention symposia of famous authors, do to theyoung (or old) struggling writer just about theworst thing they could do: "In the opening lec-ture, within the first few pages of his book, withina sentence or two of his authors' symposium, hewill be told rather shortly that 'genius cannot betaught'; and there goes his hope glimmering. Forwhether he knows it or not, he is in search of thevery thing that is denied him in that dismissivesentence." Ms. Brande's purpose in Becoming aWriter is to make available to the writer the verything usually denied.

She is right that genius can be taught (oncethe secret emptiness of that phrase is understood)because in fact genius is as common as old shoes.Everybody has it, some more than others,perhaps; but that hardly matters, since no one

Foreword 13

can hope to use up more than a very small portionof his or her native gift. Every nightmare (andeven dogs have them) hints at the secret reservesof imaginative power in the human mind. Whatthe stalled or not-yet-started writer needs is somemagic for getting in touch with himself, some key.The writer needs to know what kinds of habits ofthought and action impede progress, what un-noticed forces undermine confidence, and so on.These problems are special for the writer, shepoints out. Writing teachers and how-to-writebooks are peculiarly pessimistic. "Books writtenfor painters do not imply that the chances are thatthe reader can never be anything but a conceiteddauber, nor do textbooks on engineering start outby warning the student that because he has beenable to make a grasshopper out of two rubberbands and a matchstick he is not to think he islikely ever to be an honor to his chosen profes-sion." Ms. Brande knows and exposes the reasonsfor this mistaken pessimism in the field of writ-ing. For one thing, most successful writers (andwriting teachers) are not conscious themselves ofhow they got past the root problems; and havinglearned by experience that they cannot helpothers past them (in fact not fully understandingthat the problems are there to get past), they givewarning in advance of their limitation, unfor-


tunately laying the blame on the student andthereby incidentally intensifying the student'sproblems.

There are various other reasons for this pes-simism, this widespread error, even among writ-ing teachers, that "writing cannot be taught." Ms.Brande comments on the workaday world'sstereotypic idea about writers — how they'rechildlike, undisciplined people, possibly witches,since when writers are very good at what they dothey seem to know more than a decent personought to know. How writers, more than other ar-tists, have no visible proof of their specialnessonce they've achieved it. Visual artists, carryingaround their leather-enclosed portfolios, andmusicians, bringing complicated and persuasivenoise out of tubing or pieces of string and wood,have cumbersome physical evidence that they arenot like other mortals. Writers only use words, aseven parrots do. The defensiveness writers feel inthe beginning and often feel even after they'veachieved success (since to write at all is to lay one-self open to attack, even scorn) can take shape, inthe older writer or writing teacher, as a kind ofarrogant exclusiveness: Though he takes yourmoney for the creative-writing course, he wouldnot have you believe you are even in potential asclever as he is. Ms. Brande says, "You are likely tohear that your desire to write is perhaps only an

Foreword 15

infantile exhibitionism, or to be warned that be-cause your friends think you are a great writer (asif they ever did!) the world cannot be expected toshare that fond opinion. And so on, most tire-somely."

Ms. Brande's purpose, then, is to lay the ghosts— by specific advice and exercises lead the writerinto close touch with his-her unconscious, helpthe writer to develop healthy habits (there arereasons most writers smoke too much and drinktoo much coffee, if not gin), and guide the writerto freedom from all forms of writer's block. (Herapproach, I might mention, is wonderfully for-ward looking: Though TM was unknown, I think,at the time she wrote, she gives ingenious andsubtle exercises in meditation, even speaks ofwhat we would call mantras.) Her whole focus,and a very valuable focus indeed, is on the writer'smind and heart. Except incidentally and in pass-ing, she has nothing to say about writing tech-nique. She would perhaps argue, if one could raisethe question with her, that technique lies outsidethe specific concern of this book, which is the rootproblems; but here and there she betrays a realand, based on her own experience, apparentlyjustified distrust of writing classes. At one pointshe mentions the possibility that if the studentdid not suffer the psychological ailments she isout to eradicate, he would probably not be in a


writing course at all. At various points she showsa touch of impatience with classes on "storyform," and she mentions that all of the creative-writing classes she herself attended were, likemost books on writing, disappointing. She speaksof the tendency of workshop writers to go afterone another's stories "tooth and fang"; and sheagain and again urges (rightly) that true original-ity can come only from within.

It is certainly true that very few creative-writing courses get at the root problems —Ms.Brande's book makes me see that I myself havenever seen or taught one that did — but I do notshare Ms. Brande's low opinion of creative-writing classes. I do not mention this to suggestreservations about the work she does here butonly to point out that the root psychological prob-lems are not the only problems a writer must dealwith. I cannot remember, myself, ever sufferingany form of writer's block, and I've had, I think, anumber of students who could say the same. Al-most no one would argue, surely, that Cezanne'spainting students, or the piano students of Cortot,would have been better off with a smart psychi-atrist, or that what the young engineer reallyneeds is a wise guru from Bombay. Though thesedays it is fashionable in some quarters to attackcreative-writing classes, it seems to me obviousthat, for the student lucky enough not to be

Foreword 17

plagued by psychological root problems, or forthe student who has somehow overcome thoseproblems, such classes serve an invaluable func-tion. I can think of only a handful of well-knownAmerican writers who have not taken creative-writing courses, and usually not one course butseveral. What Ms. Brande's book suggests to me isnot that creative-writing courses do not do theirjob well, but that they do it well only for the luckyfew, turning away or turning off those whoseproblems are anterior to the matter of the course.It is easy for writing teachers to become so fixedon high standards of writing (it is his or her ownimplacable will to write well or not at all that hasmade the teacher worthy of the role), and to be-come so impatient with those who, presumablyfrom laziness or bad character or stupidity, do notdo their work, that teachers dismiss a majority ofthose they work with as "not really writers" ordownright nincompoops, failing to notice wherethe nincompoopery really lies. If student writersgo after one another "tooth and fang," or anywayif they try it more than once, the fault is theteacher's — he or she has failed to set the prop-er tone.

No one can write successfully without somemeasure of technical mastery and an ability toanalyze truthfully and usefully the virtues and de-fects in his own work or the work of others. Those


are the things one learns in a good creative-writing course. Ms. Brande's book brilliantly laysthe foundation for such a course. Until the rootproblems have been confronted and dealt with,the student of creative writing is the victim of anunwitting mean trick. And until the teacher hasrecognized his or her responsibility to deal withthose root human problems, as well as with thoseproblems more dear to our hearts, the teacher be-longs not in the classroom but in somebody'sarmy — preferably far away. I speak of suchteachers, you will have noticed, with great scorn.One often takes that tone when one feels guilty. Imean to improve myself (pray for me), so thatwhen Ms. Brande sees me trudging towardHeaven she will not use her influence and cunningwit and have the gate locked.

John GardnerSusquehanna, Pa.October 25, 1980

In Introduction

For most of my adult life I have been engaged inthe writing, the editing, or the criticizing of fic-tion. I took, and I still take, the writing of fictionseriously. The importance of novels and shortstories in our society is great. Fiction supplies theonly philosophy that many readers know; it es-tablishes their ethical, social, and material stan-dards; it confirms them in their prejudices oropens their minds to a wider world. The influenceof any widely read book can hardly be overesti-mated. If it is sensational, shoddy, or vulgar ourlives are the poorer for the cheap ideals which itsets in circulation; if, as so rarely happens, it is athoroughly good book, honestly conceived andhonestly executed, we are all indebted to it. Themovies have not undermined the influence of fic-tion. On the contrary, they have extended its field,carrying the ideas which are already current

19


among readers to those too young, too impatient,or too uneducated to read.

So I make no apology for writing seriouslyabout the problems of fiction writers; but untiltwo years ago I should have felt apologeticabout adding another volume to the writer'sworking library. During the period of my ownapprenticeship—and, I confess, long after thatapprenticeship should have been over—I readevery book on the technique of fiction, the con-structing of plots, the handling of characters,that I could lay my hands on. I sat at the feet ofteachers of various schools: I have heard the writ-ing of fiction analyzed by a neo-Freudian; I sub-mitted myself to an enthusiast who saw in theglandular theory of personality determination aninexhaustible mine for writers in search of char-acters; I underwent instruction from one whodrew diagrams and from another who startedwith a synopsis and slowly inflated it into a com-pleted story. I have lived in a literary "colony" andtalked to practicing writers who regarded theircalling variously as a trade, a profession, and(rather sheepishly) as an art. In short, I have hadfirsthand experience with almost every current"approach" to the problems of writing, and mybookshelves overflow with the works of other in-structors whom I have not seen in the flesh.

But two years ago—after still more years

In Introduction 21

spent in reading for publishers, choosing the fic-tion for a magazine of national circulation, writ-ing articles, stories, reviews and more extendedcriticism, conferring informally with editors andwith authors of all ages about their work—I be-gan, myself, to teach a class in fiction writing.Nothing was further from my mind, on the eve-ning of my first lecture, than adding to the top-heavy literature on the subject. Although I hadbeen considerably disappointed in most of thebooks I had read and all the classes I hadattended, it was not until I joined the ranks of in-structors that I realized the true basis of my dis-content.

That basis of discontent was that the difficul-ties of the average student or amateur writerbegin long before he has come to the place wherehe can benefit by technical instruction in storywriting. He himself is in no position to suspectthat truth. If he were able to discover for himselfthe reasons for his aridity the chances are that hewould never be found enrolled in any class at all.But he only vaguely knows that successful writershave overcome the difficulties which seem almostinsuperable to him; he believes that acceptedauthors have some magic, or at the very lowest,some trade secret, which, if he is alert and atten-tive, he may surprise. He suspects, further, thatthe teacher who offers his services knows that


magic, and may drop a word about it which willprove an Open Sesame to him. In the hope ofhearing it, or surprising it, he will sit doggedlythrough a series of instructions in story types andplot forming and technical problems which haveno relation to his own dilemma. He will buy orborrow every book with "fiction" in the title; hewill read any symposium by authors in whichthey tell their methods of work.

In almost every case he will be disappointed.In the opening lecture, within the first few pagesof his book, within a sentence or two of hisauthors' symposium, he will be told rathershortly that "genius cannot be taught"; and theregoes his hope glimmering. For whether he knowsit or not, he is in search of the very thing that isdenied him in that dismissive sentence. He maynever presume to call the obscure impulse to setdown his picture of the world in words by thename of "genius," he may never dare to brackethimself for a moment with the immortals of writ-ing, but the disclaimer that genius cannot betaught, which most teachers and authors seem tofeel must be stated as early and as abruptly aspossible, is the death knell of his real hope. He hadlonged to hear that there was some magic aboutwriting, and to be initiated into the brotherhoodof authors.

In Introduction 23

This book, I believe, will be unique; for I thinkhe is right. I think there is such a magic, and thatit is teachable. This book is all about the writer'smagic.

One

The Four Difficulties

So, having made my apologies, and stated my be-lief, I am going, from now on, to address myselfsolely to those who hope to write.

There is a sort of writer's magic. There is aprocedure which many an author has come uponby happy accident or has worked out for himselfwhich can, in part, be taught. To be ready to learnit you will have to go by a rather roundabout way,first considering the main difficulties which youwill meet, then embarking on simple, but strin-gently self-enforced, exercises to overcome thosedifficulties. Last of all you must have the faith, orthe curiosity, to take one odd piece of advicewhich will be unlike any of the exhortations that

25


have come your way in classrooms or in text-books.

In one other way, beside the admission thatthere is an initiate's knowledge in writing, I amgoing to depart from the usual procedure of thosewho offer handbooks for young authors. Openbook after book devoted to the writer's problems:in nine cases out of ten you will find, well towardthe front of the volume, some very gloomy para-graphs warning you that you may be no writer atall, that you probably lack taste, judgment, imag-ination, and every trace of the special abilitiesnecessary to turn yourself from an aspirant intoan artist, or even into a passable craftsman. Youare likely to hear that your desire to write isperhaps only an infantile exhibitionism, or to bewarned that because your friends think you agreat writer (as if they ever did!) the world cannotbe expected to share that fond opinion. And so on,most tiresomely. The reasons for this pessimismabout young writers are dark to me. Books writ-ten for painters do not imply that the chances arethat the reader can never be anything but a con-ceited dauber, nor do textbooks on engineeringstart out by warning the student that because hehas been able to make a grasshopper out of tworubber bands and a matchstick he is not to thinkthat he is likely ever to be an honor to his chosenprofession.

The Four Difficulties 27

Perhaps it is true that self-delusion most oftentakes the form of a belief that one can write; as tothat I cannot say. My own experience has beenthat there is no field where one who is in earnestabout learning to do good work can make suchenormous strides in so short a time. So I am goingto write this book for those who are fully in ear-nest, trusting to their good sense and their intelli-gence to see to it that they learn the elements ofsentence and paragraph structure, that they al-ready see that when they have chosen to writethey have assumed an obligation toward theirreader to write as well as they are able, that theywill have taken (and are still taking) every oppor-tunity to study the masters of English prose writ-ing, and that they have set up an exigent standardfor themselves which they work without inter-mission to attain.

It may be that it is only my extraordinarygood fortune that I have met more writers ofwhom these things are true than deluded imbe-cile scribblers. But tragically enough I have met anumber of sensitive young men and women whohave very nearly been persuaded, because theyhad come up against one of the obstacles to writ-ing which we are shortly going to consider, thatthey were unfit to write at all. Sometimes the de-sire to write overcame the humiliation they hadhad to undergo; but others dropped back into a


life with no creative outlet, unhappy, thwarted,and restless. I hope this book persuades some whoare hesitating on the verge of abandoning writingto make a different decision.

In my experience four difficulties haveturned up again and again. I am consulted aboutthem far oftener than I am asked for help in storystructure or character delineation. I suspect thatevery teacher hears the same complaints, butthat, being seldom a practicing author, he tendsto dismiss them as out of his field, or to see inthem evidence that the troubled student has notthe true vocation. Yet it is the very pupils who aremost obviously gifted who suffer from these dis-abilities, and the more sensitively organized theyare the higher the hazard seems to them. Yourembryo journalist or hack writer seldom asks forhelp of any sort; he is off after agents and editorswhile his more serious brother-in-arms is suffer-ing the torments of the damned because of his in-sufficiencies. Yet instruction in writing is oftenestaimed at the oblivious tradesman of fiction, andthe troubles of the artist are dismissed or over-looked.

The Difficulty of Writing at All

First there is the difficulty of writing at all.The full, abundant flow that must be established


if the writer is to be heard from simply will notbegin. The stupid conclusion that if he cannotwrite easily he has mistaken his career is sheernonsense. There are a dozen reasons for the diffi-culty which should be canvassed before theteacher is entitled to say that he can see no signs ofhope for this pupil.

It may be that the root of the trouble is youthand humility. Sometimes it is self-consciousnessthat stems the flow. Often it is the result of misap-prehensions about writing, or it arises from anembarrassment of scruples: the beginner may bewaiting for the divine fire of which he has heard toglow unmistakably, and may believe that it canonly be lighted by a fortuitous spark from above.The particular point to be noted just here is thatthis difficulty is anterior to any problems aboutstory structure or plot building, and that unlessthe writer can be helped past it there is very likelyto be no need for technical instruction at all.

The "One-Book Author"

Second, and far more often than the laymanwould believe, there is the writer who has had anearly success but is unable to repeat it. Here againthere is a cant explanation which is offeredwhenever this difficulty is met: this type of


writer, we are assured, is a "one-book author"; hehas written a fragment of autobiography, has un-burdened himself of his animus against his par-ents and his background, and, being relieved,cannot repeat his tour de force. But obviouslyhe does not consider himself a one-book author,or we should hear nothing more from him.Moreover, all fiction is, in the sense used here,autobiographical, and yet there are fortunateauthors who go on shaping, recombining, and ob-jectifying the items of their experience into a longseries of satisfactory books or stories. No; he isright in considering the sudden stoppage of hisgift a morbid symptom, and right, usually, inthinking it can be relieved.

It is evident, if this writer had a deserved suc-cess, that he already knows something, presuma-bly a great deal, of the technical end of his art. Histrouble is not there, and, except by happy acci-dent, no amount of counsel and advice abouttechnique will break the deadlock. He is, in someways, more fortunate than the beginner who can-not learn to write fluently, for at least he has givenevidence of his ability to set down words in im-pressive order. But his first impatience at beingunable to repeat his success can pass into dis-couragement and go on to actual despair; and anexcellent author may be lost in consequence.


The Occasional Writer

The third difficulty is a sort of combinationof the first two: there are writers who can, atwearisomely long intervals, write with great ef-fectiveness. I have had a pupil whose output wasone excellent short story each year —hardlyenough to satisfy either body or spirit. The sterileperiods were torture to her; the world, till shecould write again, a desert waste. Each time shefound herself unable to work she was certain shecould never repeat her success, and, on first ac-quaintance, she very nearly persuaded me of it.But when the cycle was lived through from startto finish she always wrote again, and wrote well.

Here again no technical instruction cantouch the difficulty. Those who suffer from thesesilences in which not one idea seems to arise, notone sentence to come irresistibly to the mind'ssurface, may write like artists and craftsmenwhen they have once broken the spell. Theteacher-consultant must form a definite idea ofthe root of the trouble and give counsel accord-ingly. It may be, again, that some notion of wait-ing for the lightning of inspiration to strike is be-hind the matter. Often it is the result of suchideals of perfection as can hardly bear the light ofday. Sometimes, but rarely, a kind of touchy van-


ity is at work, which will not risk any rebuff andso will not allow anything to be undertaken whichis not assured in advance of acceptance.

The Uneven Writer

The fourth difficulty actually has a technicalaspect: it is the inability to carry a story, vividlybut imperfectly apprehended, to a successful con-clusion. Writers who complain of this are oftenable to start a story well, but find it out of controlafter a few pages. Or they will write a good storyso drily and sparely that all its virtues are lost.Occasionally they cannot motivate their centralaction adequately, and the story carries no con-viction.

It is quite true that those who find themselvesin this pass can be greatly helped by learningabout structure, about the various forms whichthe story may take, of the innocuous "tricks of thetrade" which will help a story over the stile. Buteven here the real difficulty has set in long beforethe story form is in question. The author has notthe self-confidence necessary to present his ideawell, or he is too inexperienced to know how hischaracters would act in real life, or he is too shy towrite as fully and emotionally as he needs to writeif his story is to come to life. The writer who


turns out one weak, embarrassed, or abruptly toldstory after another obviously needs somethingmore than to have his individual manuscriptscriticized for him. As soon as possible he mustlearn to trust his own feeling for the story, and torelax in the telling, until he has learned to use thesure, deft stroke of the man who is master of hismedium. So even this dilemma comes down, afterall, to being a trouble in the writer's personalityrather than a defect in his technical equipment.

The Difficulties Not in TechnicalEquipment

Those are the four difficulties oftenest met atthe outset of an author's writing life. Almosteveryone who buys books on fiction writing, ortakes classes in the art of the short story, suffersfrom one or another of these troubles, and untilthey have been overcome he is able to get very lit-tle benefit from the technical training which willbe so valuable to him later. Occasionally writersare stimulated enough by the classroom atmos-phere to turn out stories during the course; butthey stop writing the moment that stimulus iswithdrawn. An astonishing number who reallywant ardently to write are unable even to do as-signed themes, yet they turn up hopefully —


sometimes year after year. Obviously they arelooking for help that is not being given them; andobviously they are in earnest—ready to spendwhat time, effort, and money they can to emergefrom the class of novices and "yearners" and taketheir place among productive artists.

Two

What Writers Are Like

If these are the difficulties, then we must try tocure them where they arise — in the life and atti-tudes and habits, in the very character itself. Afteryou have begun to see what it is to be a writer,after you learn how the artist functions and alsolearn to act in the same way, after you have ar-ranged your affairs and your relations so thatthey help you instead of hinder you on your waytoward the goal you have chosen, those books onyour shelves on the technique of fiction, or thoseothers which set up models of prose style andstory structure for emulation, will look quitedifferent to you, and be infinitely more helpful.This volume is not intended to replace those

35


books on craftsmanship. There are some hand-books so valuable that no writer should be with-out them. In the appended bibliography I give thetitles of those I have found most helpful for myselfand for my pupils; I have no doubt that the listcould be doubled or trebled to advantage. Thisbook is not even a companion volume to suchworks as those; it is a preliminary to them. If it issuccessful it will teach the beginner not how towrite, but how to be a writer; and that is quite an-other thing.

Cultivating a Writer's Temperament

First of all, then, becoming a writer is mainlya matter of cultivating a writer's temperament.Now the very word "temperament" is justly sus-pect among well-balanced persons, so I hasten tosay that it is no part of the program to inculcate awild-eyed bohemianism, or to set up moods andcaprices as necessary accompaniments of theauthor's life. On the contrary; the moods andtempers, when they actually exist, are the symp-toms of the artist's personality gone wrong —running off into waste effort and emotionalexhaustion.

I say "when they actually exist," for much ofthe bumptious idiocy which the average man be-

What Writers Are Like 37

lieves is an inalienable part of the artist's makeuphas no being except in the eye of the beholder. Hehas heard tales of artists all his life, and very fre-quently he really believes "poetic license" tomean that the artist claims the right to ignoreevery moral code which inconveniences him.What the non-writer thinks about the artistwould be of little account if it did not influencethose who would like to write; they are persuadedagainst their will and their better sense that thereis something fearful and dangerous in an artist'slife, and some of the very shyness which we haveseen as a mischief-maker comes from their givingtoo much credence to such popular notions.

False and Real Artists

After all, very few of us are born into homeswhere we see true examples of the artistic tem-perament, and since artists do certainly conducttheir lives—necessarily—on a different patternfrom the average man of business, it is very easy tomisunderstand what he does and why he does itwhen we see it from the outside. The picture of theartist as a monster made up of one part vainchild, one part suffering martyr, and one partboulevardier is a legacy to us from the last cen-tury, and a remarkably embarrassing inheri-


tance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of theartist than that, the idea of the genius as a manmore versatile, more sympathetic, more studiousthan his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less atthe mercy of the ideas of the crowd.

The grain of truth in the fin de siècle notion,though, is this: the author of genius does keeptill his last breath the spontaneity, the readysensitiveness, of a child, the "innocence of eye"that means so much to the painter, the ability torespond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and toold scenes as though they were new; to see traitsand characteristics as though each were new-minted from the hand of God instead of sortingthem quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise; to feelsituations so immediately and keenly that theword "trite" has hardly any meaning for him;and always to see "the correspondences betweenthings" of which Aristotle spoke two thousandyears ago. This freshness of response is vital to theauthor's talent.

The Two Sides of a Writer

But there is another element to his character,fully as important to his success. It is adult, dis-criminating, temperate, and just. It is the side of


the artisan, the workman and the critic ratherthan the artist. It must work continually with andthrough the emotional and childlike side, or wehave no work of art. If either element of the ar-tist's character gets too far out of hand the resultwill be bad work, or no work at all. The writer'sfirst task is to get these two elements of his natureinto balance, to combine their aspects into oneintegrated character. And the first step towardthat happy result is to split them apart for consid-eration and training!

"Dissociation" Not Always Psychopathic

We have all read a great many Sunday "fea-ture stories," magazine articles, and books ofpopularized psychology; so our first impulse is toshy violently away from the words "dissociationof personality." A dual personality, to the readerwho has a number of half-digested notions aboutthe constitution of the mind, is an unlucky fellowwho should be in a psychopathic ward; or, at thehappiest, a flighty, hysterical creature. Neverthe-less, every author is a very fortunate sort of dualpersonality, and it is this very fact that makes himsuch a bewildering, tantalizing, irritating figureto the plain man of affairs who flatters himselfthat he, at least, is all of a piece. But there is no


scandal and no danger in recognizing that youhave more than one side to your character. Thejournals and letters of men of genius are full ofadmissions of their sense of being dual or multi-ple in their nature: there is always the workadayman who walks, and the genius who flies. Theidea of the alter ego, the other self, or higher self,recurs wherever genius becomes conscious of itsown processes, and we have testimony for it in ageafter age.

Everyday Examples of Dual Personality

Indeed, the dual character of the genius isalmost a commonplace. As a matter of fact, it isa commonplace for all of us, to some extent.Everyone has had the experience of acting with adecision and neatness in an emergency whichseem later to him to savor of the miraculous; thiswas the figure which Frederick W. H. Myers usedto convey his idea of the activity of genius. Orthere is the experience of the "second wind" thatcomes after long grinding effort, when suddenlyfatigue seems to drop away and a new character toarise like a phoenix from the exhausted mind orbody; and the work that went so haltingly beginsto flow under the hand. There is the obscurer, butcognate, experience of having reached a decision,


solved a problem, while we slept, and finding thedecision good, the solution valid. All these every-day miracles bear a relation to genius. At suchmoments the conscious and the unconscious con-spire together to bring about the maximum ef-fect; they play into each other's hands, support-ing, strengthening, and supplementing each oth-er, so that the resulting action comes from the full,integral personality, bearing the authority of theundivided mind.

The man of genius is one who habitually (orvery often, or very successfully) acts as his lessgifted brothers only rarely do. He not only acts inan event, but he creates an event, leaving his rec-ord of the moment on paper, canvas, or in stone.As it were, he makes his own emergency and actsin it, and his willingness both to instigate andperform marks him off from his more inert, lesscourageous comrades.

Everyone who has seriously wanted to writehas some hint of this. Often it is in the very mo-ment of vision that the first difficulties arise.Embarkation on the career is easy enough; an in-clination to reverie, a love of books, the early dis-covery that it is not too difficult to turn a phrase— to find any or all of these things in one's firstadolescent consciousness is to believe that onehas found the inevitable, and not too formidable,vocation.


The Slough of Despond

But then comes the dawning comprehensionof all that a writer's life implies: not easy day-dreaming, but hard work at turning the dreaminto reality without sacrificing all its glamour;not the passive following of someone else's story,but the finding and finishing of a story of one'sown; not writing a few pages which will be judgedfor style or correctness alone, but the prospect ofturning out paragraph after paragraph and pageafter page which will be read for style, content,and effectiveness. Nor is this by any means all thebeginning writer foresees. He worries to think ofhis immaturity, and wonders how he ever dared tothink he had a word worth saying. He gets asstagestruck at the thought of his unseen readersas any sapling actor. He discovers that when he isable to plan a story step by step, the fluency heneeds to write it has flown out the window; orthat when he lets himself go on a loose rein, sud-denly the story is out of hand. He fears that hehas a tendency to make his stories all alike, orparalyzes himself with the notion that he willnever, when this story is finished, find anotherthat he likes as well. He will begin to follow cur-rent reputations and harry himself because hehas not this writer's humor or that one's in-genuity. He will find a hundred reasons to doubt


himself and not one for self-confidence. He willsuspect that those who encouraged him are toolenient, or too far from the market to know thestandards of successful fiction. Or he will read thework of a real genius in words, and the discrep-ancy between that gift and his own will seem achasm to swallow his hopes. In such a state, light-ened now and again by moments when he feels hisown gift alive and surging, he may stay for monthsor years.

Every writer goes through this period of de-spair. Without doubt many promising writers,and most of those who were never meant to write,turn back at this point and find a lifework lessexacting. Others are able to find the other bank oftheir slough of despond, sometimes by inspira-tion, sometimes by sheer doggedness. Still othersturn to books or counselors. But often they areunable to tell the source of their baffled discom-fort; they may even assign the reasons for theirfeeling of fright to the wrong causes, and thinkthat they miss effectiveness because they "cannotwrite dialogue," or "are no good at plots," or"make all the characters too stiff." When theyhave worked as intensively as possible to over-come the weakness, only to find that their diffi-culties continue, there comes another unofficialweeding-out. Some drop away from this group;still others persist, even though they have


reached the stage of dumb discomfort where theyno longer feel that they can diagnose their owncases.

No ordeal by discouragement which editors,teachers, and older writers can devise is going tokill off the survivor of this type. What he needs torealize first is that he tried to do too much at once,and next, that although he started going about hisself-education step by step, he took the wrongsteps. Most of the methods of training the con-scious side of the writer — the craftsman and thecritic in him — are actually hostile to the good ofthe unconscious, the artist's side; and the con-verse of this proposition is likewise true. But it ispossible to train both sides of the character to workin harmony, and the first step in that education is toconsider that you must teach yourself not as thoughyou were one person, but two.

Three

The Advantages ofDuplicity

To see why training oneself to be a writer is a dou-ble task, let us go rapidly over the process of storyformation.

The Process of Story Formation

Like any other art, creative writing is a func-tion of the whole man. The unconscious must flowfreely and richly, bringing at demand all the trea-sures of memory, all the emotions, incidents,scenes, intimations of character and relationshipwhich it has stored away in its depths; the con-

45


scious mind must control, combine, and dis-criminate between these materials without ham-pering the unconscious flow. The unconsciouswill provide the writer with "types" of all kinds— typical characters, typical scenes, typical emo-tional responses; the conscious will have thetask of deciding which of these are too personal,too purely idiosyncratic to be material for art,and which of them are universal enough to be use-ful. It may also be called upon to add intention-ally those special traits which turn too universal afigure into an individual character, to undertakethe humanizing of a type-form —a necessity if thefiction is to convey a sense of reality.

Each writer's unconscious will be found tohave, if I may put it so, a type-story of its own: be-cause of the individual's history, he will tend tosee certain dilemmas as dramatic and overlookothers entirely, as he will also have his own idea ofthe greatest possible happiness and personalgood. Of course, it follows that each writer'sstories will always bear a fundamental likeness toeach other. This need not be seen as a threat ofmonotony, but the conscious mind must beenough aware of it to alter, recombine, introduceelements of surprise and freshness into each newstory project.

Because of the tendency of the unconscious tosee things in types, it is the unconscious, in thelong run, which dictates the form of the story.

The Advantages of Duplicity 47

(But this will be taken up more fully later. All thatneeds pointing out here is that if this is so a greatdeal of instruction on plot making is a waste oftime. Certain ingenuities can be suggested, thepopular story of any given period can be isolatedand studied, and formulas for its writing can bedevised; but unless a given formula is alreadycongenial to the student he will get little help byattempting to model his own work upon it.) Atany rate, the story arises in the unconscious. Itthen appears, sometimes only vaguely prefig-ured, at other times astonishingly definite, in theconsciousness. There it is scrutinized, pruned, al-tered, strengthened, made more spectacular orless melodramatic; and is returned into the un-conscious for the final synthesis of its elements.After a period of intense activity—which, how-ever, goes on at so deep a level that the authorhimself occasionally feels he has "forgotten" or"lost" his idea—it once again signals to the con-scious that the work of synthesis has been done;and the actual writing of the story begins.

The "Born Writer"

In the genius, or the "born writer," we see thisprocess taking place so smoothly and often sorapidly that even this overcompressed schemeseems to misrepresent the story's history. But the


genius, you must remember, is the man who bysome fortunate accident of temperament or edu-cation can put his unconscious completely at theservice of his reasonable intention, whether ornot he is aware that this is so. The proof of thisstatement will emerge later, for the process ofmaking a writer is the process of teaching thenovice to do by artifice what the born writer doesspontaneously.

Unconscious and Conscious

The unconscious is shy, elusive, and un-wieldy, but it is possible to learn to tap it at will,and even to direct it. The conscious mind is med-dlesome, opinionated, and arrogant, but it can bemade subservient to the inborn talent throughtraining. By isolating as far as possible the func-tions of these two sides of the mind, even by con-sidering them not merely as aspects of the samemind but as separate personalities, we can arriveat a kind of working metaphor, impossible to con-fuse with reality, but infinitely helpful in self-education.

The Two Persons of the Writer

So, for a period, while the conception is use-ful to you, think of yourself as two-persons-in-one.There will be a prosaic, everyday, practical per-


son to bear the brunt of the day's encounters. Itwill have plenty of virtues to offset its stolidity; itmust learn to be intelligently critical, detached,tolerant, while at the same time rememberingthat its first function is to provide suitable condi-tions for the artist-self. The other half of your dualnature may then be as sensitive, enthusiastic, andpartisan as you like; only it will not drag thosetraits out into the workaday world. It distinctlywill not be allowed, by the cherishing elderly side,to run the risk of being made miserable by tryingto cope emotionally with situations which callonly for reason, or of looking ludicrous to the un-indulgent observer.

The Transparent Barrier

The first advantage that will be gained byyour innocent duplicity is that you will haveerected a transparent barrier between you andthe world, behind which you can grow into yourartistic maturity at your own pace. The averageperson writes just too much and not quite enoughto have any great opinion of an author's life. It isunfortunate, but the unimaginative citizen findssomething exquisitely funny about the idea thatone aspires to make a name and a living by anysuch process as "stringing words together." Hefinds it presumptuous when an acquaintance an-nounces that he has elected to give the world his


opinion in writing, and punishes the presump-tion by merciless teasing. If you feel called uponto correct this unimaginative attitude you willhave opportunities enough to keep you busy for alifetime, but you will not—unless you have anextraordinary amount of energy —have muchstrength left for writing. The same plain man re-acts as impulsively and naively to the successfulwriter. He is awestruck in his presence, but he isalso very uncomfortable. Nothing but witchcraft,he seems to believe, could have made anotherhuman being so wise in the ways of his kind. Hewill turn self-conscious, and act either untypi-cally or refuse to act at all; and if you alarm himyou will find yourself barred from one source ofyour material. This is a low piece of advice to give,but I give it without apology: keep still about yourintentions, or you will startle your quarry.

Keep Your Own Counsel

Then, too, the writer is at a disadvantageshared by no novice of the other arts. He does usethe medium of ordinary conversation, of friendlyletters and business letters, when he exercises hisprofession; and he has no impressive parapher-nalia to impose respect on the layman. Now thateveryone has his portable typewriter, not eventhat badge of his profession is left to the young


writer. A musical instrument, canvas, clay, carrytheir own persuasiveness by seeming exotic to theuninitiated. Even a good singing voice does notissue from every throat. Until your name has beenin print again and again you may get only teasingfor your pains if you prematurely announce yourallegiance to writing. At that, most young writerswould benefit by taking a leaf from the prac-titioners of other arts; the violinist does not carryaround his violin, the artist does not carry hispalette and brushes, unless he is intending to usethem, either privately or before a well-disposedaudience. Give yourself the advantage of the samediscretion, at least while you are finding your feet.

One excellent psychological reason for anauthor to keep his profession to himself is that ifyou confess so much you are likely to go furtherand talk of the things you mean to write. Nowwords are your medium, and effective use of themyour profession; but your unconscious self (whichis your wishful part) will not care whether thewords you use are written down or talked to theworld at large. If you are for the moment fortu-nate enough to have a responsive audience youoften suffer for it later. You will have created yourstory and reaped your reward in approval orshocked disapproval; in either case you will havehit your mark. Afterward you will find yourselfdisinclined to go on with the laborious process ofwriting that story at full length; unconsciously


you will consider it as already done, a twice-toldtale. If you can conquer the disinclination to writeyou may still find that a slightly flat, uninterestednote creeps in, in spite of you. So practice a wisetaciturnity. When you have completed a fair firstdraft you can, if you like, offer it for criticism andadvice; but to talk too early is a grave mistake.

There are other advantages in consideringyourself a two-in-one character. It should not beyour sensitive, temperamental self which bearsthe burden of your relations with the outsideworld of editors, teachers, or friends. Send yourpractical self out into the world to receive sugges-tions, criticisms, or rejections; by all means see toit that it is your prosaic self which reads rejectionslips! Criticism and rejection are not personal in-sults, but your artistic component will not knowthat. It will quiver and wince and run to cover,and you will have trouble in luring it out again toobserve and weave tales and find words for all thethousand shades of feeling that go to make up astory.

Your "Best Friend and Severest Critic"

For another thing, your writing self is an in-stinctive, emotional creature, and if you are not


careful you will find yourself living the life thatwill give you the least annoyance and the greatestease instead of a life that will continually feedand stimulate your talent. The "artistic tempera-ment" is usually perfectly satisfied to exercise it-self in reverie and amuse itself in solitude, andonly once in a long while will the impulse to writerise spontaneously to the surface. If you leave it tothe more sensitive side of your nature to set theconditions of work and living for you, you mayfind yourself at the end of your days with very lit-tle to show for the gift you were born with. A farbetter idea is to realize from the start that you aresubject to certain caprices of action, and to studyyourself objectively until you find which of yourimpulses are sound and which are likely to leadyou into the bogs of inertia and silence. At firstyou will find it a great bore to be forever examin-ing yourself for tendencies and habits; later youwill find it second nature. Still later you willcome to enjoy it rather too much, and the samecritical attention will have to be given to the taskof turning your scrutiny away from your own pro-cesses when your analysis has passed the stagewhere it bears beneficial fruits. In short, you willhave to learn to be your own best friend andseverest critic —mature, indulgent, stern andyielding by turns.


The Right Recreation

Observe, though, that you are to be your ownbest friend—not simply your stern and discipli-nary elder. No one else will be in a position to dis-cover for you what is best in the way of stimula-tion, amusement, and friends. Perhaps music(however little you know about music) may havethe effect of starting up the obscure internal pro-cesses which send you to the typewriter. In thatcase it will be the task of your elder self to find andpurvey music to you—and to see that you are notput on the defensive when you are questionedabout your astonishing taste for symphony or-chestras or Negro spirituals. You will find, too,that some friends are excellent for you as a writerwho are worthless to you otherwise —and viceversa. Too stimulating a social life can be as hardon a budding talent as none at all. Only observa-tion will show you the effect of any group or per-son on you as a writer. Seeing a dull soul whom youdoggedly adore, or a brilliant friend who irritatesyou, may have to be treated as a very special formof indulgence, to be yielded to only rarely. If youfeel, after an evening with the stolid friend, thatthe world is a dry and dusty place, or if you areexasperated to the point of speechlessness by yourbrilliant acquaintance, not the warmest emotion


for them will justify your seeing much of themwhile you are trying to learn to write. You willhave to find other acquaintances, persons who,for some mysterious reason, leave you full ofenergy, feed you with ideas, or, more obscurelystill, have the effect of filling you with self-confidence and eagerness to write.

Friends and Books

If you are not fortunate enough to findthem—well, you will discover fairish substituteson library shelves, and occasionally in thestrangest guises. I had a pupil who battened onmedical case reports, and another who record-ed that a few hours with a popular scientificmonthly, which she could hardly understand inspite of its being insultingly elementary, inducedin her such a feeling of being glutted with neat,hard little facts that she ran off to retrieve thebalance by a debauch of imaginative writing. Iknow a popular author who abhors the works ofJohn Galsworthy, but something in Galsworthy'srhythm starts up his own desire to write; he al-leges that after a few pages of The Forsyte Saga hecan hear an "internal hum" which soon turns intosentences and paragraphs; on the other hand,


Wodehouse, whom he considers a past master ofmodern humorous writing, plunges him into suchdepths of despond about his own performancethat he takes care not to read the latest Wode-house book until he has finished whatever hehas in hand. Watch for a while, and see whichauthors are your meat and which your poison.

When the actual writing is to be done, yourelder self must stand aside, only murmuring asuggestion now and again on such matters as yourtendency to use repetitions, or to suggest that youare being too verbose, or that the dialogue is get-ting out of hand. Later you will call on it to con-sider the completed draft, or section, and with itshelp you will alter the manuscript to get the bestpossible effects. But at the time of writing, noth-ing is more confusing than to have the alert, criti-cal, overscrupulous rational faculty at the fore-front of your mind. The tormenting doubts ofone's own ability, the self-conscious mutenessthat drops like a pall over the best story ideas,come from consulting the judge in oneself at themoment when it is the storyteller's turn to be inthe ascendant. It is not easy at first to inhibit therunning verdicts on every sentence, almost everyword, that is written, but once the flow of thestory has well set in, the critical faculty will becontent to wait its turn.


The Arrogant Intellect

There is no arrogance like that of the intel-lect, and one of the dangers, as we have said, ofstudying the technique of story writing toosolemnly is that the reason is confirmed in its de-lusion of being the more important member of thewriting team. It is not. Its duties are indispensa-ble but secondary; they come before and after theperiod of intensive writing. You will find that ifyou cannot rein in your intellect during thisperiod it will be forever offering pseudo-solutionsto you, tampering with motives, making thecharacters "literary" (which is often to makethem stereotyped and unnatural), or protestingthat the story which seemed so promising when itfirst dawned in your consciousness is really triteor implausible.

The Two Selves Not at War

But now I am in danger of making it seemthat these two halves of the writing personalityare at war with each other, when it is the exactcontrary that is true. When each has found itsplace, when each is performing the functionswhich are proper to it, they play endlessly back


and forth into each other's hands, strengthening,inciting, relieving each other in such a way thatthe resulting personality, the integral character,is made more balanced, mellow, energetic, andprofound. It is precisely when they are at warthat we get the unhappy artist—the artist who isworking against the grain, or against his soberjudgment, or, saddest of all, is unable to work. Themost enviable writers are those who, quite oftenunanalytically and unconsciously, have realizedthat there are different facets to their nature andare able to live and work with now one, now an-other, in the ascendant.

The First Exercise

Now we come to the first exercise of a bookwhich will be full of exercises. Its purpose is toshow you how simple it is to see oneself objec-tively.

You are near a door. When you come to theend of this chapter put the book aside, get up, andgo through that door. From the moment you standon the threshold turn yourself into your own objectof attention. What do you look like, standingthere? How do you walk? What, if you knew noth-ing about yourself, could be gathered of you, yourcharacter, your background, your purpose just


there at just that minute? If there are people inthe room whom you must greet, how do you greetthem? How do your attitudes to them vary? Doyou give any overt sign that you are fonder of one,or more aware of one, than of the rest?

There is no deep, dark, esoteric purpose be-hind this exercise. It is a primer lesson in consid-ering oneself objectively, and should be dismissedfrom your mind when you have learned whatyou can from it. Another time try sitting at easeand—using no gestures at all—tell yourself stepby step how you comb your hair. (You will find itharder than you think.) Again, follow yourself atany small routine task. A little later take anepisode of the day before; see yourself going up toit and coming away from it; and the episode itselfas it might have looked to a stranger. At still an-other time think how you might have looked if youcould follow yourself all day long from a littleheight. Use the fiction maker's eye on yourself to seehow you would have appeared when you went inand out of houses, up streets and into stores, andback home at the end of the day.

Four

Interlude: On TakingAdvice

With the best of intentions, we usually go aboutthe formation of a new habit or the eradication ofan old one in the manner most calculated to de-feat our purpose. Whenever you come across apiece of advice in these pages I exhort you not tostraighten your spine, grit your teeth, clench yourfists, and go at the experiments with the light ofdo-or-die on your countenance.

Save Your Energy

We customarily expend enough energy incarrying out any simple action to bring about a

61


result three times greater than the one we have inview. This is true from the simplest matters to themost complex and of physical effort as well asmental. If we climb stairs, we climb them withevery muscle and organ laboring as though oursoul's salvation were to be found on the top step,and the result is that we grow resentful at the dis-proportionate returns we receive from our ex-pended energy. Or, putting a great deal moreenergy out than we can use, we must take it up,somehow, in purposeless motion. Everyone hashad the experience of pushing a door that lookedclosed with more vigor than was necessary and offalling into the next room as a consequence. Or wehave picked up some light object which lookeddeceptively heavy. If you notice yourself on suchan occasion, you will see that you must make aslight backward motion merely to retrieve yourbalance.

Imagination Versus Willin Changing Habits

In mental effort we are likely to go still morewidely astray from some childish notion that it islaudable to exert that "slow, dead heave of thewill" as often as possible. But in changing habits,you will find yourself getting your results far

Interlude: On Taking Advice 63

more quickly and with less "backwash" if youengage your imagination in the process instead ofcalling out the biggest gun of your characterequipment first.

This is not a plea to abandon the will. Therewill be times and occasions when only the wholeweight of the will brought to bear on the matter inhand will prove effective. But the imaginationplays a far greater role in our lives than we cus-tomarily acknowledge, although any teacher cantell you how great an advocate the imagination iswhen a child is to be led into a changed course.

Displacing Old Habits

Old habits are strong and jealous. They willnot be displaced easily if they get any warningthat such plans are afoot; they will fight for theirexistence with subtlety and persuasiveness. Ifthey are too radically attacked they will revengethemselves; you will find, after a day or two of ex-traordinarily virtuous effort, all sorts of reasonswhy the new method is not good for you, why youshould alter it in line with this or that old habit, oractually abandon it entirely. In the end you willhave had no good from the new advice; but youwill almost certainly feel that you have given it afair trial and that it has failed. Your mistake will


have been that you tired yourself out and ex-hausted your good intentions before you had achance to see whether or not the program was theright one for you.

This is a very simple but rather spectacularexperiment which you can make that will teachyou more about your own processes of putting anidea into operation than pages of exhortation andexplanation. It is this:

A Demonstration

Draw a circle on a sheet of paper, using thebottom of a tumbler or something of that circum-ference as the guide; then make a cross through it.Tie a heavy ring or a key on a string about fourinches long. Hold the end of the string with thering hanging like the weight of a pendulum overthe intersection of the cross, about an inch abovethe paper. Now think around the circle, followingthe circumference with your eyes and ignoringthe ring and cord entirely.

After a few moments the little pendulum willbegin to swing around in the direction you havechosen, at first making a very small circle, butsteadily widening out as it goes on. Then reversethe direction in thought only and follow the circlewith your eyes in the other direction. . . . Now


think up and down the perpendicular line; whenthat succeeds, shift to the horizontal. In each casethe ring will stop for a moment and then begin tomove in the direction of your thinking.

If you have not tried this experiment beforeyou may feel that there is something uncannyabout the result. There isn't. It is simply theneatest and easiest way of showing how impor-


tant imagination can be in the sphere of action.Minute involuntary muscles take up the task foryou. The will, you see, was hardly involved in thematter at all. And this, some French psychologistssay, is the way to observe, in miniature, a "faithcure" in operation. At the least, it should demon-strate that it is not necessary to brace every nerveand muscle to bring about a change in yourdaily life.

The Right Frame of Mind

So, then, in doing the exercises in this book,turn yourself gently, in a relaxed and pleasantframe of mind, in the direction you want to go. Seeyourself, for a few minutes, doing the recom-mended experiment. After you have had a fewsuccesses by this method, you will find that it iscapable of infinite extension. Consider that all theminor inconveniences and interruptions of habitsare to the end of making a full and effective life foryourself. Forget or ignore for a while all the diffi-culties you have let yourself dwell upon too often;refuse to consider, in your period of training, thepossibility of failure. You are not at this stage ofyour career in any position to estimate yourchances justly. Things which look difficult or im-possible to you now will be seen in truer perspec-


tive when you have gone a little further. Later youcan take an inventory of yourself from time totime, see what is easy for you and what you dobadly or imperfectly. You can consider then whatsteps to take to correct these definite faults, andby that time you will be able to work on yourselfprofitably, without discouragement or bravado.

Five

Harnessing theUnconscious

To begin with, you must teach the unconscious toflow into the channel of writing. Psychologistswill forgive us for speaking so airily about "teach-ing" the unconscious to do this or that. To all in-tents and purposes that is what happens; but lesselegantly and more exactly we might say that thefirst step toward being a writer is to hitch yourunconscious mind to your writing arm.

Wordless Daydreams

Most persons who are attracted by the ideaof fiction at all are, or were in childhood, great

69


dreamers. At almost any moment they can catchthemselves, at some level, deep in reverie. Occa-sionally this reverie takes the form of recastingone's life, day by day or moment by moment, intoa form somewhat nearer to the heart's desire: re-constructing conversations and arguments sothat we come out with colors flying and epigramsfalling around us like sparks, or imagining our-selves back in a simpler and happier period. Oradventure is coming toward us around the nextcorner, and we have already made up our mindsas to the form it will take. All those naive andsatisfying dreams of which we are the unashamedheroes or heroines are the very stuff of fiction, al-most the materia prima of fiction. A little sophis-tication, a little experience, and we realize thatwe are not going to be allowed to carry off thehonors in real life without a struggle; there are toomany contenders for the role of leading lady orleading man. So, learning discretion and guile,we cast the matter a little differently; we objec-tify the ideal self that has caused us so much plea-sure and write about him in the third person. Andhundreds of our fellows, engaged secretly in justsuch daydreaming as our own, see themselves inour fictional characters and fall to reading whenfatigue or disenchantment robs them of theirability to see themselves under any glamorousguise. (Not, thank heaven, that this is the only rea-

Harnessing the Unconscious 71

son a book is ever read; but undoubtedly it is thecommonest one.)

The little Brontes, with their kingdom ofGondaland, the infant Alcotts, young RobertBrowning, and H. G. Wells all led an intensivedream-life which carried over into their maturityand took another form; and there are hundreds ofauthors who could tell the same stories of theiryouth. But there are probably thousands morewho never grow up as writers. They are too self-conscious, too humble, or too solidly set in thehabit of dreaming idly. After all, we begin ourstorytelling, usually, long before we are able toprint simple words with infinite labor. It is littlewonder that the glib unconscious should balk atthe drudgery of committing its stories to writing.

Toward Effortless Writing

Writing calls on unused muscles and involvessolitude and immobility. There is not much to besaid for the recommendation, so often heard, toserve an apprenticeship to journalism if you in-tend to write fiction. But a journalist's careerdoes teach two lessons which every writer needsto learn —that it is possible to write for longperiods without fatigue, and that if one pushes onpast the first weariness one finds a reservoir of


unsuspected energy —one reaches the famous"second wind."

The typewriter has made the author's waymore rocky than it was in the old days of quill andpen. However convenient the machine may be,there is no doubt about the muscular strain in-volved in typewriting; let any author tell you ofrising stiff and aching from a long session.Moreover, there is the distraction set up by the lit-tle clatter of keys, and there is the strain of seeingthe shafts continually dancing against the platen.But it is possible to make either typing or writingby hand second nature, so that muscular strainwill not slow you down or keep you from writing.

So if you are to have the full benefit of therichness of the unconscious you must learn towrite easily and smoothly when the unconsciousis in the ascendant.

The best way to do this is to rise half an hour, ora full hour, earlier than you customarily rise. Just assoon as you can—and without talking, without read-ing the morning's paper, without picking up thebook you laid aside the night before—begin to write.Write anything that comes into your head: lastnight's dream, if you are able to remember it; theactivities of the day before; a conversation, real orimaginary; an examination of conscience. Writeany sort of early morning reverie, rapidly and un-critically. The excellence or ultimate worth ofwhat you write is of no importance yet. As a mat-

Harnessing the Unconscious 73

ter of fact, you will find more value in this mate-rial than you expect, but your primary purposenow is not to bring forth deathless words, but towrite any words at all which are not pure non-sense.

To reiterate, what you are actually doing istraining yourself, in the twilight zone betweensleep and the full waking state, simply to write. Itmakes no difference to the success of this practiceif your paragraphs are amorphous, the thoughtvague or extravagant, the ideas hazy. Forget thatyou have any critical faculty at all; realize that noone need ever see what you are writing unless youchoose to show it. You may, if you can, write in anotebook, sitting up in bed. If you can teach your-self to use the typewriter in this period, so muchthe better. Write as long as you have free time, oruntil you feel that you have utterly written your-self out.

The next morning begin without rereadingwhat you have already done. Remember: you areto write before you have read at all. The purpose ofthis injunction will become clear later. Now allyou need to concern yourself with is the mere per-formance of the exercise.

Double Your "Output"

After a day or two you will find that there is acertain number of words that you can write easily


and without strain. When you have found thatlimit, begin to push it ahead by a few sentences,then by a paragraph or two. A little later try todouble it before you stop the morning's work.

Within a very short time you will find thatthe exercise has begun to bear fruit. The actuallabor of writing no longer seems arduous or dull.You will have begun to feel that you can get asmuch (far more really) from a written reverie asfrom one that goes on almost wordlessly in theback of your mind. When you can wake, reach outfor your pencil, and begin to write almost on oneimpulse, you will be ready for the next step. Keepthe material you have written—under lock andkey if that is the only way to save yourself fromself-consciousness. It will have uses you canhardly foresee.

As you take up the next exercise, you can re-turn, in this morning task, to the limit that seemseasy and natural. (But you should be able to writemore words than when you began.) Watch your-self carefully; if at any time you find you haveslipped back into inactive reverie, it is time toexert pressure on yourself. Throughout your writ-ing life, whenever you are in danger of thespiritual drought that comes to the most facilewriter from time to time, put the pencil and paperback on your bedside table, and wake to write inthe morning.

Six

Writing on Schedule

At once, when you have put the suggestion in thelast chapter into operation, you will find that youare more truly a writer than you ever were before.You will discover that now you have a tendency tocast the day's experiences into words, to foreseethe use that you will make of an anecdote orepisode that has come your way, to transform therough material of life into fictional shape, moreconsistently than you did when writing was asporadic, capricious occupation which broke outfrom time to time unaccountably, or was under-taken only when you felt that you had a storyfirmly within your grasp.

The moment you reach that stage, you are

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ready for the next step, which is to teach yourselfto write at a given moment. The best way to do it isthis:

Engaging to Write

After you have dressed, sit down for a mo-ment by yourself and go over the day before you.Usually you can tell accurately enough what itsdemands and opportunities will be; roughly, atleast, you can sketch out for yourself enough ofyour program to know when you will have a fewmoments to yourself. It need not be a very longtime; fifteen minutes will do nicely, and there isalmost no wage slave so driven that he cannotsnatch a quarter of an hour from a busy day if he isin earnest about it. Decide for yourself when youwill take that time for writing; for you are goingto write in it. If your work falls off, let us say, afterthree-thirty in the afternoon, the fifteen minutesfrom four o'clock until quarter past four cansafely be drafted as time of your own.

Well, then, at four o'clock you are going towrite, come what may, and you are going to con-tinue until the quarter-hour sounds. When youhave made up your mind to that you are free to dowhatever you like to do or must do.

Writing on Schedule 77

A Debt of Honor

Now this is very important, and can hardly beemphasized too strongly: you have decided to writeat four o'clock, and at four o'clock write you must!No excuses can be given. If at four o'clock you findyourself deep in conversation, you must excuseyourself and keep your engagement. Your agree-ment is a debt of honor, and must be scrupulouslydischarged; you have given yourself your wordand there is no retracting it. If you must climb outover the heads of your friends at that hour, then beruthless; another time you will find that you havetaken some pains not to be caught in a dilemma ofthe sort. If to get the solitude that is necessary youmust go into a washroom, go there, lean againstthe wall, and write. Write as you write in themorning —anything at all. Write sense or non-sense, limericks or blank verse; write what youthink of your employer or your secretary or yourteacher; write a story synopsis or a fragment ofdialogue, or the description of someone you haverecently noticed. However halting or perfunctorythe writing is, write. If you must, you can write, "Iam finding this exercise remarkably difficult,"and say what you think are the reasons for the dif-ficulty. Vary the complaint from day to day till itno longer represents the true state of affairs.


Extending the Exercise

For you are going to do this from day to day,but each time you are to choose a different hour.Try eleven o'clock, or a moment or two before orafter lunch. Another time, promise yourself towrite for fifteen minutes before you start for homein the evening; or fifteen minutes before you dine.The important thing is that at the moment, on thedot of the moment, you are to be writing, and thatyou teach yourself that no excuse of any naturecan be offered when the moment comes.

While you are merely reading this recom-mendation you may be quite unable to see why itis put so emphatically. As you begin to put it intopractice you will understand. There is a deepinner resistance to writing which is more likely toemerge at this point than in the earlier exercise.This will begin to "look like business" to the un-conscious, and the unconscious does not like theserules and regulations until it is well broken in tothem; it is incorrigibly lazy in its busy-ness andgiven to finding the easiest way of satisfying it-self. It prefers to choose its own occasions and toemerge as it likes. You will find the most remark-able series of obstacles presented to you under thesimilitude of common sense: Surely it will be justas satisfactory to write from 4:05 to 4:20? If youbreak out of a circle you are likely to be cross-

Writing on Schedule 79

questioned, so why not wait till the circle breaksup by itself and then take your fifteen minutes? Inthe morning you could hardly foresee that youwere going to work yourself into a headache thatday; can work done under the handicap of aheadache possibly be fit to do? And so on and on.But you must learn to disregard every loopholethe wily unconscious points out to you. If you con-sistently, doggedly, refuse to be beguiled, you willhave your reward. The unconscious will suddenlygive in charmingly, and begin to write gracefullyand well.

Succeed, or Stop Writing

Right here I should like to sound the sol-emnest word of warning that you will find inthis book: If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, giveup writing. Your resistance is actually greater thanyour desire to write, and you may as well find someother outlet for your energy early as late.

These two strange and arbitrary per-formances — early morning writing, and writingby prearrangement — should be kept up till youwrite fluently at will.

Seven

The First Survey

When you have succeeded in establishing thesetwo habits — early morning writing and writingby agreement with yourself—you have come along way on the writer's path. You have gained, onthe one hand, fluency, and on the other control,even though in an elementary way. You know agreat deal more about yourself, in all likelihood,than you did when you embarked on the exercises.For one thing, you know whether it was easier toteach yourself to write on and on, or whetherwriting by prearrangement seemed more nat-ural. Perhaps for the first time you see that if youwant to write you can write, and that no life isactually so busy as to offer no opportunities if you

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are alert to find them. Then, too, you should beginto think it less than miraculous that writers canbring out book after book, having found in your-self the same inexhaustible resources that issue inthe work of others. The physical mechanism ofwriting should have ceased to be tiring and begunto take its place as a simple activity. Your realiza-tion of the writer's life is probably more vivid, andnearer to the truth, than it was before—which isin itself a long stride to have taken.

Now it is time to consider yourself and yourproblems objectively again; and if you have fol-lowed the exercises well you should have plenty ofmaterial for an illuminating first survey.

Reading Your Work Critically

Up to this point it is best to resist the tempta-tion to reread your productions. While you aretraining yourself into facility in writing andteaching yourself to start writing whenever andwherever opportunity offers, the less you turn acritical eye upon your own material the better—even for a cursory survey. The excellence or trite-ness of your writing was not the matter underconsideration. But now, turning back to see whatit may reveal under a dispassionate survey, youmay find those outpourings very enlightening.

The First Survey 83

The Pitfalls of Imitation

You will remember that one of the conditionsset was that you should not have read one wordbefore beginning the morning's task, nor, if at allpossible, so much as spoken until you havefinished. This is the reason. We all live so sur-rounded by words that it is difficult for us to dis-cover, without long experience, what our ownrhythms are, and what subjects do really appealto us. Those who are sensitive enough to want ar-dently to become writers are usually a little toosuggestible for their own good. Consciously ornot, they may have fallen into the temptation ofimitating an established author. It may be agenuine master of writing; it may be (and toooften is) the author whose work is having thegreatest vogue at the moment. No one who hasnot taught fiction writing can believe how often apupil will say some such thing as, "Oh, I've justthought of the most marvelous Faulkner story!"or, more ambitiously, "I think I can make a reg-ular Virginia Woolf out of it." The teacher whocrassly says she would rather see a good story ofthe pupil's own is damned for a prig, or outspo-kenly argued with; for the notion that playing thesedulous ape to the extent of copying not only theprose style but the very philosophies and narra-tive forms of current popular authors seems to


have been so inculcated in our apprentice writersthat they genuinely believe they will become orig-inal authors by the process of imitation. The menand women who have served as their models,since they are writing from a strong native talentand according to their own personal tastes, grow,alter, change their styles and their "formulas,"and the poor sedulous apes are left imitating thework of an outmoded period.

Discovering Your Strength

The best way to escape the temptation to im-itate is to discover as early as possible one's owntastes and excellences. Here, in the sheaf of pagesyou have written during this period of habit-making, is priceless laboratory material for you.What, on the whole, do you write, when you setdown the first things that occur to you? Try toread, now, as though you had the work of astranger in your hands, and to discover there whatthe tastes and talents of this alien writer may be.Put aside every preconception about your work.Try to forget any ambitions or hopes or fears youmay have entertained, and see what you woulddecide was the best field for this stranger if hewere to consult you. The repetitions, the recur-rent ideas, the frequent prose forms in these pages

The First Survey 85

will give you your clues. They will show youwhere your native gift lies, whether or not youeventually decide to specialize in it. There is noreason to believe that you can write only one typeof work, that you may not be fully as successful insome other line; but this examination will showyou where your richest and most easily tappedvein lies.

In my experience, the pupil who sets downthe night's dream, or recasts the day before intoideal form, who takes the morning hour to write acomplete anecdote or a passage of sharp dialogue,is likely to be the short story writer in embryo.Certain types of character sketching, when it isbrief and concerned with rather general (or evenobvious) traits, point the same way. A subtleranalysis of characters, a consideration of motives,acute self-examination (as distinct from roman-ticizing one's actions), the contrasting of differ-ent characters faced by the same dilemma, mostoften indicate the novelist. A kind of musing in-trospection or of speculation only sketched in isfound in the essay writer's notebook, althoughwith a grain of drama added, and with the par-ticularizing of an abstract speculation by assign-ing the various elements of the problem to char-acters who act out the idea, there is promise of themore meditative type of novelist.

When this stage of instruction is reached


there is often in my classes a burst of highlystimulating activity. Seeing the possibilities inthe writing which they now feel came almostwithout effort, the pupils frequently branch intosome type of work which they look on simply asrecreation, and hammer away on their more dif-ficult problems in their "working" time. Thesespontaneous manuscripts are usually very in-teresting, and often, with some shaping, can beturned into satisfactory finished work. They are alittle rambling, a little discursive, but they have afresh, unforced tone which is striking. About thistime you will find that your work is already lesspatchy and uneven; you are striking your ownstride and finding your own rhythm, as well asdiscovering which subjects have a perennialinterest for you.

A Footnote for Teachers

Here I should like to add a footnote for otherteachers, rather than for students of writing. Ithink that holding up the work of each pupil inclass for the criticism of the others is a thoroughlypernicious practice, and it does not becomeharmless simply by allowing the manuscript tobe read without assigning its authorship publicly.

The First Survey 87

The ordeal is too trying to be taken with equanim-ity, and a sensitive writer can be thrown out of hisstride deplorably by it, whether or not the criti-cism is favorable. It is seldom that the criticism isfavorable, when a beginner is judged by the jury ofhis peers. They seem to need to demonstrate that,although they are not yet writing quite perfectlythemselves, they are able to see all the flaws in astory which is read to them, and they fall upon ittooth and fang. Until self-confidence arises nat-urally, and the pupil asks for group criticism, hiswork should be treated as utterly confidential bythe teacher. Each will have his own rate of growthand it can only go on steadily if not endangered bythe setbacks that come from embarrassment andself-consciousness. I recommend an almost in-human taciturnity to my students, at least aboutwork that is being done at the moment. Therehave been weeks when I have had nothing at allfrom the best workers in the class, only to havethree or four full-length manuscripts from asingle pupil at the end of the silent period. Beyondstipulating that each pupil must follow the exer-cises as they are given out, whether or not I see thematerial which is written from day to day, I assignno tasks.

Eight

The Critic at Work onHimself

Now, we will suppose, you have a kind of roughpreliminary idea of yourself as a writer. It will be avery rough idea, still distorted by humility insome directions and overconfidence in others, butat least it will bear enough resemblance to yourultimate professional self to be worth working on.Even in this unfinished state you will realize thatthere are definite things which you can do foryourself that will improve the quality of yourwriting, provide you with occasions for writing,or stimulate you so that writing will follow nat-urally. It is time now to call on your prosaic side

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for the services it can render you. (As a matter offact, it will already have been called on to read thematerial and find your self-revealed tastes, butthat was only preliminary.) There are a hundredthings it can do for you as soon as you have given itthis much material to work on. If it is called in toosoon, though, it hampers you more than it helps.

Here you are then, with all these pages andnotebooks to be examined by your common sense,everyday character. By the cursory examinationrecommended in the last chapter you have al-ready found the more obvious trends in your ownwork. Now it is time to be more specific, and toexamine in detail what you have done. Your work-aday self has been standing aside while you wereabout the business of teaching your unconsciousto flow whenever you could find a moment for it;you will find now that it has been closely follow-ing the process, remarking your successes andfailures, and getting ready with suggestions.

A Critical Dialogue

The next few paragraphs are much morenaive and more outrageously dual than anydialogue you will ever have with yourself, butsome such interchange as this between the sidesof your nature should now take place:

"Do you know, I find that you write dialogue

The Critic at Work on Himself 91

very well; you evidently have a good ear. But yourpassages of description aren't well done. They'restilted."

Here the culprit will probably murmursomething about liking to write dialogue, butfeeling silly when describing anything withoutthe protection of quotation marks.

"Of course you love to write dialogue," youmust return, "just because you do it well. Butdon't you realize that if you can't do straight pas-sages and transitions smoothly you're going to geta jerky story? You'd better make up your mind, Ishould say, whether you want to write fiction or tospecialize in playwriting. Either way, you've got alot of work to do."

"Which should you say? That's almost asmuch in your department as mine?"

"Well, fiction, on the whole. You don't showmuch interest yet in dramatic and spectaculareffects, or in building up to a visually effectiveclimax. You unfold a character slowly and bymeans of dialogue. If you had all the time andpaper in the world you could undoubtedly get toyour point by using dialogue alone, but, you see,you have space and effectiveness to consider.You'll have to do some of it in straight narrativeform. No, all in all, I think we'd better work onyour weak spots. You might read a lot of E. M.Forster in your spare time. He gets from point topoint remarkably well. In the meanwhile, here's a


passage for you to meditate upon. It's from EdithWharton's The Writing of Fiction:

'The use of dialogue in fiction seems to beone of the few things about which a fairly definiterule may be laid down. It should be reserved forthe culminating moments, and regarded as thespray into which the great wave of narrativebreaks in curving toward the watcher on theshore. This lifting and scattering of the wave, thecoruscation of the spray, even the mere materialsight of the page broken into short, uneven para-graphs, all help to reenforce the contrast betweensuch climaxes and the smooth effaced glidingof the narrative intervals; and the contrast en-hances that sense of the passage of time for theproducing of which the writer has to depend onhis intervening narration. Thus the sparing use ofdialogue not only serves to emphasize the crises ofa tale, but to give it as a whole a greater effect ofcontinuous development.' "

Or the exhortation may take the form of re-marking a minor stylistic matter, and you willaddress yourself on it: "By the way, do you realizethat you overwork the word 'colorful'? Every timeyou're in too much of a hurry to find the exactword you want you fall back on that; you're usingit to death. Very sloppy habit. In the first place


it's, usually, too vaguely inclusive to give the effectyou want, and in the second, it is being used by allthe advertising writers in the country just now.Stay away from it for a while."

Be Specific in Suggestions

Although you may not be quite so direct asthis in your discourse, still you are advised toaddress yourself directly on these points, makingthe complaints specific, and, wherever possible,suggesting specific remedies. You will remembermore easily, and you will have reenforced yourown discontent with this or that element in yourwriting in such a way that you must take steps tocorrect the slipshod practice or confess that youare not working seriously at the profession youhave chosen. Make a clean-cut issue for yourselfwherever you are able to put your finger on afault; if you suspect that there are weaknesseswhich you do not see for some reason, show yourwork to someone whose good taste and judgmentyou trust. You will often find that a reader whohas no pretensions to literary knowledge can puta finger on your stylistic sins as directly as awriter, an editor, or a teacher; but turn to outsidecounsel only after you have done all you are ableto do for yourself. In the long run, it is your taste


and your judgment that must carry you over thepitfalls, and the sooner you educate yourself intobeing all things to your writing-character the bet-ter your prospects are.

Correction After Criticism

Press home all the points on which you haveany doubts. Do you use too many short declara-tive sentences, or too many exclamation points?Is your vocabulary lush, or too severe? Are you soreticent that you slide over an emotional scene sorapidly that your reader may miss the very thingyou are trying to convey? Do you indulge inblood-and-thunder past the point of credibility?Then try to find the antidote. The reticent writercan force himself to read Swinburne, or Carlyle,or any one of a number of contemporary authorswho are more sensational than decorous. The over-sensational can reverse the recommendation,and read the eighteenth-century Englishmen, orsuch writers as William Dean Howells, WillaCather, Agnes Repplier. If you have a dull andprosy note, a course in the novels and stories of G.K. Chesterton should be of advantage. There isalmost no limit to the recommendations whichcould be made, but you must learn both to diag-nose your own case and to find your own best


medicine. When you have found your antidote,read with humility, determined to see the excel-lence in writers who are natively antipathetic toyou; while you are performing your stylistic pe-nance, give yourself no quarter. Leave the bookswhich usually attract you severely alone.

The Conditions of Excellence

Next set yourself to discover if you can see anyconnection between a good morning's work andthe conditions of the evening before. Can you tellwhether or not the good writing came after youhad spent an active day, or after a quiet one? Didyou write more easily after going to bed early, orafter a short sleep? Is there any observable con-nection between seeing certain friends and thevividness or dullness of the next morning's work?How did you write on the morning after you hadbeen to a theater, or to an exhibition of pictures, orto a dance? Notice such things, and try to arrangefor the type of activity which results in good work.

Dictating a Daily Regime

Then turn your attention to your daily re-gime. Most writers flourish greatly on a simple,


healthy routine with occasional time off for gai-ety. Here you will touch the very foundations ofprosaic common sense, for you will have to decideon such matters as what diet suits you and whatfood you must leave alone. If you are going in for alifetime of writing, it stands to reason that youmust learn to work without the continual use ofstimulants, so find what ones you can use in mod-eration and what must be dropped. Bursts ofwork are not what you are out to establish as yourhabit, but a good, steady, satisfying flow, risingoccasionally to an extraordinary level of perfor-mance, but seldom falling below what you havediscovered is your own normal output. A com-pletely honest inventory, taken every two or threemonths, or twice a year at the least, will keep youup to the best and most abundant writing ofwhich you are capable.

While you are having this honest showdownis the time to ask yourself whether you are allow-ing your temperamental side too much voice inthe conduct of your daily life. Do you find yourselfemotional and headstrong in situations where anunprejudiced observer would expect you to bedispassionate and judicial? Are you hamperingyourself by being resentful or envious or easilydepressed? These are all matters to be cleared upby quiet consideration. Envy, depression, re-sentment, will poison the very springs from


which your work flows, and the sooner you eradi-cate the faintest traces of them the better yourwriting will be.

When you have these sessions, have themthoroughly. This close, analytical probing ofyourself should be done rarely, but well. You mustbe not only strict with yourself but fair. A blanketcondemnation will get you no further than un-critical self-approval. If there is a type of writingwhich you do well, by all means recognize it andencourage yourself by it. Hold your own goodwork up to yourself as a standard, and exact workof the same grade in other lines.

After each of these sessions you will see thatyou emerge with a clearer idea of yourself, yourabilities, and your weaknesses. At first you arelikely to emphasize some points over others, andlater will be astonished at your own blindness toequally important i tems. But you will havelearned how to keep a friendly, critical eye on yourown progress, and what steps to take to bringyourself nearer your goal. Once more: don't followyourself around, nagging and suggesting andcomplaining. When you feel that you would bene-fit by an inventory, set an hour for it, have it thor-oughly, take the suggestions you have made; thencome out and live without introspection till thenext occasion for an overhauling arises.

Nine

Reading as a Writer

To get the most benefit from the corrective read-ing you are going to do after these periodical in-ventories, you must take a little trouble to learn toread as a writer. Anyone who is at all interested inauthorship has some sense of every book as aspecimen, and not merely as a means of amuse-ment. But to read effectively it is necessary tolearn to consider a book in the light of what it canteach you about the improvement of your ownwork.

Most would-be writers are bookworms, andmany of them are fanatical about books and li-braries. But there is often a deep distaste at theidea of dissecting a book, or reading it solely forstyle, or for construction, or to see how its author

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has handled his problems. Some feeling that onewill never again get the bewitched, fascinatedinterest from any volume that one got as an un-critical but appreciative reader makes many astudent-writer protest at the idea of putting hisfavorite authors under a microscope. As a matterof fact, when you have learned to read criticallyyou will find that your pleasure is far deeper thanit was when you read as an amateur; even a badbook becomes tolerable when you are engaged inprobing it for the reasons for its stiff, unnaturaleffects.

Read Twice

At first you will find that the only way to readas a writer is to go over everything twice. Readthe story, article, or novel to be studied rapidlyand uncritically, as you did in the days when youhad no responsibility to a book but to enjoy it.When you have finished put it aside for a while,and take up a pencil and scratch pad.

Summary Judgment and DetailedAnalysis

First make a short written synopsis of whatyou have just read. Now pass a kind of summary

Reading as a Writer 101

judgment on it: you liked it, or didn't like it. Youbelieved it, or were left incredulous. You likedpart of it, and disliked the rest. (You may, if youlike later, pass a moral judgment on it, too, butnow confine your decisions to what you believewere the author's intentions, as far as you are ableto discern them.)

Go on to enlarge on these flat statements. Ifyou liked it, why did you? Don't be discouraged ifyour answer to this is vague at first. You are goingto read the book again, and will have anotherchance to see whether you can find the source ofyour response. If part of it seemed good to you andthe rest weak, see whether you are able to tellwhen the author lost your assent. Were the char-acters drawn with uniform skill, badly drawn, orinconsistent only occasionally? Do you know whyyou felt this?

Do any of the scenes stand out in your mind?Because they were well done, or because an op-portunity was so stupidly missed? Remember anypassage which arrested your attention for anyreason. Is the dialogue natural, or, if stylized, isthe formality purposeful or a sign of the author'slimitations?

By this time you know some of your ownweaknesses. How does the author you have justread handle situations which would be difficultfor you?


The Second Reading

If it is a good book your list of questionsshould be long and searching, your answers par-ticularized as much as possible. If it is not espe-cially good it will be enough, at first, to find theweak spots in it and lay it aside. When you havemade your synopsis and answered your own ques-tions as far as possible, make a check againstthose you were not able to answer fully, or thatseem to promise more enlightenment if you pur-sue them. Now start at the first word again, read-ing slowly and thoroughly, noting down your an-swers as they become plain to you. If you find anypassage particularly well done, and especially ifthe author has used adroitly material whichwould be hard for you to handle, mark them.Later you can return to them and use them asmodels after further analysis.

You know now how the story ends; be on thewatch for the clues to that ending which comeearly in the book or story. Where was the char-acter trait that brings about the major complica-tion first mentioned? Was it brought in smoothlyand subtly, or lugged in by the ears? Do you find,on second reading, that there are false clues—passages which do not make the book more real,or which distort the author's intention, but whichhave been allowed to pass although they intro-

Reading as a Writer 103

duce an unnecessary element or actually misleadthe reader? Go over such passages carefully, tomake sure that you are not missing the author'sfull meaning, and be sure that you are right beforeconcluding that the author was at fault.

Points of Importance

There is no end to the amount of stimulationand help you can get from reading with criticalattention. Read with every faculty alert. Noticethe rhythm of the book, and whether it is acceler-ated or slowed when the author wishes to be em-phatic. Look for mannerisms and favorite words,and decide for yourself whether they are worthtrying for practice or whether they are too plainlythe author's own to reward you for learning theirstructure. How does he get the characters fromone scene to another, or mark the passing of time?Does he alter his vocabulary and emphasis whenhe centers his attention first on one character andthen on another? Does he seem to be omniscient,is he telling only what would be apparent to onecharacter and allowing the story to dawn on thereader by following that character's enlighten-ment? Or does he write first from the viewpoint ofone and then another, and then a third? How doeshe get contrast? Is it, for instance, by placing


character against setting incongruously —asMark Twain put his Connecticut Yankee downinto the world of King Arthur's day?

Each writer will ask his own questions andfind his own suggestive points. After the first fewbooks—which you must read twice if you are tomake good use of the work of others—you willfind that you can read for enjoyment and for criti-cism simultaneously, reserving a second readingonly for those pages where the author has been athis best or worst.

Ten

On Imitation

Now as to imitation for practice. When you havelearned to find in the writing of others the mate-rial which is suggestive for your own work, youare in a position to imitate in the only way inwhich imitation can be of any use to you. Thephilosophies, the ideas, the dramatic notions ofother writers of fiction should not be directlyadopted. If you find them congenial, go back tothe sources from which those authors originallydrew their ideas, if you are able to find them.There study the primary sources and take anyitems over into your own work only when theyhave your deep acquiescence — never because theauthor in whose work you find them is temporar-ily successful, or because another can use them

105


effectively. They are yours to use only when youhave made them your own by full acquaintanceand acceptance

Imitating Technical Excellences

But technical excellences can be imitated,and with great advantage. When you have found apassage, long or short, which seems to you far bet-ter than anything of the sort you are yet able to do,sit down to learn from it.

Study it even more closely than you havebeen studying your specimen book or specimenstory as a whole. Tear it apart almost word byword. If possible, find a cognate passage in yourown work to use for comparison. Let us assume,for instance, that you have trouble with that bug-bear of most writers when they first begin to workseriously —conveying the passing of time. Youeither string out your story to no purpose, follow-ing your character through a number of unimpor-tant or confusing activities to get him from onesignificant scene to another, or you drop himabruptly and take him up abruptly between twoparagraphs. In the story you have been reading,which is about the length of the one you want towrite, you find that the author has handled suchtransitions smoothly, writing just enough, but

On Imitation 107

not a word too much, to convey the illusion oftime's passing between two scenes. Well, then;how does he do it? He uses—how many words?Absurd as it may seem at first to think that any-thing can be learned by word-counting, you willsoon realize that a good author has a just sense ofproportion; he is artist enough to feel how muchspace should be given to take his character fromthe thick of action in one situation into the centerof the next.

How to Spend Words

In a story of five thousand words, let us say,your author has given a hundred and fifty wordsto the passing of a night and a day, rather unim-portant, in the life of his hero. And you? Threewords, or a sentence perhaps: "The next day, Con-rad, etc."* Something too skimpy about it al-together. Or, on the other hand, although therewas nothing in Conrad's night and morning thatwas pertinent to the story in hand, and althoughyou have already used up all the space you can af-

*I hasten to say that there are occasions on which the words, "Thenext day, Conrad, etc.," may be exactly the number of words andexactly the emphasis to be given to a transition We are assuming forthe moment that such a transition is, for the story you are engagedon, too abrupt.


ford in the sketching of your hero's character, bysheer inability to stop talking about him once youhave started you may have given six hundred or athousand words to the retailing of totally irrele-vant matters about his day.

How does the author expend the words thatyou have counted? Does he drop for a few para-graphs into indirection, after having told thestory up to this time straightforwardly? Does hechoose words which convey action, in order toshow that his hero, although not engaged duringthat time in anything that furthered the story,still has a full life while he is, as it were, offstage?What clues does he drop into the concludingsentence which allows him to revert to the trueaction? When you have found as much as you areable to find in that way, write a paragraph of yourown, imitating your model sentence by sentence.

Counteracting Monotony

Again it may be that you feel that your writ-ing is monotonous, that verb follows noun, andadverb follows verb, with a deadly samenessthroughout your pages. You are struck by thevariety, the pleasant diversity of sentence struc-tures and rhythms in the author you are reading.Here is the real method of playing the sedulous

On Imitation 109

ape: The first sentence has twelve words; you willwrite a twelve word sentence. It begins with twowords of one syllable each, the third is a noun oftwo syllables, the fourth is an adjective of foursyllables, the fifth an adjective of three, etc. Writeone with words of the same number of syllables,noun for noun, adjective for adjective, verb forverb, being sure that the words carry their em-phasis on the same syllables as those in the model.By choosing an author whose style is complemen-tary to your own you can teach yourself a greatdeal about sentence formation and prose rhythmin this way. You will not wish, or need, to do it of-ten, but to do it occasionally is remarkably help-ful. You become aware of variation and tone inyour reading, and learn as you read. Once havingtaken the trouble to analyze a sentence into itscomponent parts and construct a similar one ofyour own, you will find that some part of yourmind is thereafter awake to subtleties which youmay have passed obliviously before.

Pick Up Fresh Words

Be on the alert to find appropriate wordswherever you read, but before you use them besure they are congruous when side by side withthe words of your own vocabulary. Combing a


thesaurus for what an old professor of mine usedto call, contemptuously, "vivid verbs" will be farless useful than to find words in the midst of a liv-ing story; although a thesaurus is a good tool if itis used as it is meant to be.

Last of all, turn back to your own writing andread it with new eyes: read it as it will look if itmakes its way into print. Are there changes youcan make which will turn it into effective, diversi-fied, vigorous prose?

Eleven

Learning to See Again

The Blinders of Habit

The genius keeps all his days the vividnessand intensity of interest that a sensitive child feelsin his expanding world. Many of us keep this re-sponsiveness well into adolescence; very few ma-ture men and women are fortunate enough to pre-serve it in their routine lives. Most of us are onlyintermittently aware, even in youth, and the oc-casions on which adults see and feel and hear withevery sense alert become rarer and rarer with thepassage of years. Too many of us allow ourselves togo about wrapped in our personal problems,walking blindly through our days with our atten-tion all given to some petty matter of no particu-

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lar importance. The true neurotic may beengrossed in a problem so deeply buried in hisbeing that he could not tell you what it is that he iscontemplating, and the sign of his neurosis is hisineffectiveness in the real world. The most nor-mal of us allow ourselves to become so insulatedby habit that few things can break through ourpreoccupations except truly spectacular events— a catastrophe happening under our eyes, ourindolent strolling blocked by a triumphal pa-rade; it must be a matter which challenges us inspite of ourselves.

This dullness of apprehension to which we allsubmit spinelessly is a real danger to a writer.Since we are not laying up for ourselves daily ob-servations, fresh sensations, new ideas, we tend toturn back for our material to the same period inour lives, and write and rewrite endlessly thesensations of our childhood or early years.

Causes of Repetitiousness

Everyone knows an author who seems tohave, somehow, only one story to tell. The char-acters may be given different names from book tobook, they may be put into ostensibly differentsituations; their story may end happily or on a

Learning to See Again 113

tragic note. Nevertheless we feel each time weread a new book by that author that we haveheard the same thing before. Whatever theheroine's name, we can be sure that snowflakeswill fall and melt on her eyelashes, or that on awoodland walk her hair will be caught by a twig.A hero of D. H. Lawrence will drop into Lanca-shire dialect in moments of emotion, a heroine ofStorm Jameson is likely to make a success at ad-vertising writing and to have come from a ship-building family. Kathleen Norris will give you ablue mixing bowl in a sunny kitchen at least inevery other book—and so on, ad infinitum. Thetemptation to rework material which has an emo-tional value for us is so great that it is almostnever resisted; and there is no reason why itshould be, if the reworking is well done. But oftenone is led to suspect that the episode is usedthrough thoughtlessness and that with a littlemore trouble the author might have been able toturn up equivalent touches, just as valid, just aseffective emotionally, and far less stale. The truthis that we all have a tendency to remember thingswhich we saw under the clear, warm light ofchildhood, and to return to them whenever wewish to bring a scene to life. But if we continue touse the same episodes and items over and over welose effectiveness.


Recapturing Innocence of Eye

It is perfectly possible to strip yourself of yourpreoccupations, to refuse to allow yourself to goabout wrapped in a cloak of oblivion day andnight, although it is more difficult than one mightthink to learn to turn one's attention outwardagain after years of immersion in one's own prob-lems. Merely deciding that you will not be oblivi-ous is hardly enough, although every writershould take the recommendation of HenryJames, and register it like a vow: "Try to be one ofthe people on whom nothing is lost."* By way ofgetting to that desirable state, set yourself a shortperiod each day when you will, by taking thought,recapture a childlike "innocence of eye." For halfan hour each day transport yourself back to thestate of wide-eyed interest that was yours at theage of five. Even though you feel a little self-conscious about doing something so deliberatelythat was once as unnoticed as breathing, you willstill find that you are able to gather stores of newmaterial in a short time. Don't plan to use thematerial at once, for you may get only the brittle,factual little items of the journalist if you do notwait for the unconscious mind to work its mira-

*In his essay "The Art of Fiction," in Partial Portraits. Macmillan.


cles of assimilation and accretion on them. Butturn yourself into a stranger in your own streets.

A Stranger in the Streets

You know how vividly you see a strange townor a strange country when you first enter it. Thehuge red buses careening through London, on thewrong side of the road to every American thatever saw them — soon they are as easy to dodge andignore as the green buses of New York, and as littlewonderful as the drugstore window that you passon your way to work each day. The drugstore win-dow, though, the streetcar that carries you towork, the crowded subway, can look as strange asXanadu if you refuse to take them for granted. Asyou get into your streetcar, or walk along a street,tell yourself that for fifteen minutes you willnotice and tell yourself about every single thingthat your eyes rest on. The streetcar: what color isit outside? (Not just green or red, here, but sage orolive green, scarlet or maroon.) Where is theentrance? Has it a conductor and motorman, or amotorman-conductor in one? What colors inside,the walls, the floor, the seats, the advertisingposters? How do the seats face? Who is sitting op-posite you? How are your neighbors dressed, howdo they stand or sit, what are they reading, or are


they sound asleep? What sounds are you hearing,what smells are reaching you, how does the strapfeel under your hand, or the stuff of the coat thatbrushes past you? After a few moments you candrop your intense awareness, but plan to resumeit again when the scene changes.

Another time speculate on the person oppo-site you. What did she come from, and where isshe going? What can you guess about her from herface, her at t i tude, her clothes? What, do youimagine, is her home like?*

It will be worth your while to walk on strangestreets, to visit exhibitions, to hunt up a movie ina strange part of town in order to give yourself theexperience of fresh seeing once or twice a week.But any moment of your life can be used, and theroom that you spend most of your waking hours inis as good, or better, to practice responsiveness onas a new street. Try to see your home, your family,your friends, your school or office, with the sameeyes that you use away from your own daily route.There are voices you have heard so often that youforget they have a timbre of their own; unless youare morbidly hypersensitive, the chances are thatyou hardly realize that your best friend has a ten-dency to use some words so frequently that if you

*See the story entitled "An Unwritten Novel" in Virginia Woolf'sMonday or Tuesday.


were to write a sentence involving those wordsanyone who knew him would realize whom youwere imitating.

All such easy and minor exercises are excel-lent for you if you really want to write. No onecares to follow a dull and stodgy mind throughinnumerable pages, and a mind is so easilyfreshened. Remember that part of the advice is toput what you notice into definite words before youabandon it to the manipulation of the uncon-scious. Finding the exact words is not alwaysnecessary, but much usable stuff will slip throughyour fingers if you do not emphasize it in this way.If you think, "Oh, I'm sure to remember that," youwill find that you are often merely begging offfrom a hard task. You aren't finding the words forthe new sensation simply because the words donot come easily; persistently going after the rightphrase will reward you with a striking, well-realized item sometime when you need it badly.

The Rewards of Virtue

Shortly after you begin looking about you likethis you will see that your morning's pages arefuller and better than before. It is not only thatyou are bringing new material to them every day,but you are stirring the latent memories in your


mind. Each fresh fact starts a train of associationsreaching down into the depths of your nature, re-leasing for your use sensations and experiences,old delights, old sorrows, days that have beenoverlaid in your memory, episodes which you hadquite forgotten.

This is one reason for the inexhaustible re-sources of the true genius. Everything that everhappened to him is his to use. No experience is sodeeply buried that he cannot revive it; he can finda type-episode for every situation that his imag-ination can present. By the simple means of refus-ing to let yourself fall into indifference and bore-dom, you can reach and revive for your writingevery aspect of your life.

Twelve

The Source ofOriginality

It is a commonplace that every writer must turnto himself to find most of his material; it is such acommonplace that a chapter on the subject islikely to be greeted with groans. Nevertheless itmust be written, for only a thorough understand-ing of the point will clear away the misapprehen-sions as to what constitutes "originality."

The Elusive Quality

Every book, every editor, every teacher willtell you that the great key to success in authorshipis originality. Beyond that they seldom go. Some-

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times they will point out to the persistent in-quirer someone whose work shows the "original-ity" that they require, and those free examples areoften responsible for some of the direst mistakesthat young writers fall into. "Be original, likeWilliam Faulkner," an editor will say, meaningonly to enforce his advice by an instance; or "Lookat Mrs. Buck; now if you could give me somethinglike that—!" And the earnest inquirer, quite miss-ing the point of the exhortation, goes home andtries with all his might to turn out what I have al-ready complained of: "a marvelous Faulknerstory," or "a perfect Pearl Buck novel." Once in along while—a very long while, if my experience aseditor and teacher counts for anything—the im-itative writer actually finds in his model somequality so congenial that he is able to turn out anacceptable story on the same pattern. But for onewho succeeds there are hundreds who fail. I couldfind it in my heart to wish that everyone who cuthis coat by another man's pattern would find theresult a crass failure. For originality does not liedown that road.

It is well to understand as early as possible inone's writing life that there is just one contribu-tion which every one of us can make: we can giveinto the common pool of experience some com-prehension of the world as it looks to each of us.

The Source of Originality 121

There is one sense in which everyone is unique. Noone else was born of your parents, at just that timeof just that country's history; no one underwentjust your experiences, reached just your conclu-sions, or faces the world with the exact set of ideasthat you must have. If you can come to suchfriendly terms with yourself that you are able andwilling to say precisely what you think of anygiven situation or character, if you can tell a storyas it can appear only to you of all the people onearth, you will inevitably have a piece of workwhich is original.

Now this, which seems so simple, is the verything that the average writer cannot do. Partlybecause he has immersed himself in the writing ofothers since he was able to read at all, he is sadlyapt to see the world through someone else's eyes.Occasionally, being imaginative and pliable, hedoes a very good job of it, and we have a storywhich is near enough to an original story to seemgood, or not to show too plainly that it is deriva-tive. But often those faults in comprehension,those sudden misunderstandings of one's ownfictional characters, come from the fact thatthe author is not looking at the persons of hisown creation with his own eyes; he is using theeyes of Mr. Faulkner, of Mr. Hemingway, of D. H.Lawrence or Mrs. Woolf.


Originality Not Imitation

The virtue of those writers is precisely thatthey have refused to do what their imitators do sohumbly. Each of them has had a vision of theworld and has set out to transcribe it, and theirwork has the forthrightness and vigor of all workthat comes from the central core of the personal-ity without deviation or distortion. There is al-ways a faint flavor of humbug about a Dreiserianstory written by some imitator of Mr. Dreiser, orone of those stark mystical Laurentian tales notdirectly fathered by D. H. Lawrence; but it is ex-ceedingly hard to persuade the timid or hero-worshipping young writer that this must alwaysbe so.

The "Surprise Ending"

When the pitfall of imitation is safely skirted,one often finds that in the effort to be original anauthor has pulled and jerked and prodded hisstory into monstrous form. He will plant dyna-mite at its crisis, turn the conclusion inside out,betray a character by making him act unchar-acteristically, all in the service of the God of Orig-inals. His story may be all compact of horror, or,more rarely, good luck may conquer every obsta-


cle hands down; and if the teacher or editor pro-tests that the story has not been made credible,its author will murmur "Dracula" or "KathleenNorris," and will be unconvinced if told that theminimum requirement for a good story has notbeen met: that he has not shown that he, theauthor, truly and consistently envisages a worldin which such events could under any circum-stances come to pass, as the authors whom he isimitating certainly do.

Honesty, the Source of Originality

So these stories fail from their own inconsis-tency, although the author has at his command, inthe mere exercise of stringent honesty, the bestsource of consistency for his own work. If you candiscover what you are like, if you can discoverwhat you truly believe about most of the majormatters of life, you will be able to write a storywhich is honest and original and unique. Butthose are very large "ifs," and it takes hard dig-ging to get at the roots of one's own convictions.

Very often one finds a beginner who is unwill-ing to commit himself because he knows justenough about his own processes to be sure that hisbeliefs of today are not likely to be his beliefs oftomorrow. This operates to hold him under a sort


of spell. He waits for final wisdom to arrive, andsince it tarries he feels that he cannot commithimself in print. When this is a real difficulty, andnot simply (as it sometimes is) a neurotic excuseto postpone writing indefinitely, you will find awriter who can turn out a sketch, a half-story withno commitments in it, but seldom more. Obvi-ously what such a writer needs is to be made torealize that his case is not isolated; that we allcontinue to grow, and that in order to write at allwe must write on the basis of our present beliefs.If you are unwilling to write from the honest,though perhaps far from final, point of view thatrepresents your present state, you may come toyour deathbed with your contribution to theworld still unmade, and just as far from final con-viction about the universe as you were at the ageof twenty.

Trust Yourself

There are only so many dramatic situationsin which man can find himself—three dozen, ifone is to take seriously The Thirty-six DramaticSituations of Georges Polti—and it is not the put-ting of your character in the central position of adrama which has never been dreamed of beforethat will make your story irresistible. Even if it


were possible to find such a situation it would bean almost heartbreaking feat to communicate itto your readers, who must find some recognizablequality in the story they read or be hopelessly atsea. How your hero meets his dilemma, what youthink of the impasse—those are the things whichmake your story truly your own; and it is yourown individual character, unmistakably showingthrough your work, which will lead you to successor failure. I would almost be willing to go so far asto say that there is no situation which is trite initself; there are only dull, unimaginative, or un-communicative authors. No dilemma in which aman can find himself will leave his fellows un-moved if it can be fully presented. There is, for in-stance, a recognizable thematic likeness betweenThe Way of All Flesh, Clayhanger, and Of HumanBondage. Which of them is trite?

"Your Anger and My Anger"

Agnes Mure MacKenzie, in The Process of Lit-terature, says, "Your loving and my loving, youranger and my anger, are sufficiently alike for us tobe able to call them by the same names: but in ourexperience and in that of any two people in theworld, they will never be quite completely identi-cal"; if that were not literally true there would be


neither basis nor opportunity for art. And again,in a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Mrs.Wharton, writing The Confessions of a Novelist,declares: "As a matter of fact, there are only twoessential rules: one, that the novelist should dealonly with what is within his reach, literally orfiguratively (in most cases the two are synony-mous), and the other that the value of a subject de-pends almost wholly on what the author sees in it,and how deeply he is able to see into it."

By returning to those quotations from timeto time you may at last persuade yourself that it isyour insight which gives the final worth to yourwriting, and that there is no triteness where thereis a good, clear, honest mind at work.

One Story, Many Versions

Very early in my classes I set out to prove thisby direct demonstration. I ask for synopses ofstories reduced to the very bones of an outline. Ofthose that are offered I choose the "tritest." In oneclass this was offered: "A spoiled girl marries andnearly ruins her husband by her attitude towardmoney." I confess that when I read this aloud tomy pupils my heart misgave me. I could foresee,myself, only one elaboration of it, with one possi-ble variation which would only occur to those


who could perform the rather sophisticated featof "dissociation" upon it —those, that is, whocould discover what their immediate response tothe idea was, and then deliberately alter theirfirst association into its opposite. The class wasasked to write for ten minutes, expanding thesentence into a paragraph or two, as if they weregoing to write a story on the theme. The result, ina class of twelve members, was twelve versions sodifferent from each other that any editor couldhave read them all on the same day withoutrealizing that the point of departure was the samein each.

We had, to begin with, a girl who was spoiledbecause she was a golf champion, and who, sinceshe was an amateur, nearly ruined her husbandby traveling around to tournaments. We had astory of a politician's daughter who had en-tertained her father's possible supporters andwho entertained her husband's employer toolavishly, leading him to think that his youngright-hand man was too sure of promotion. Wehad a story of a girl who had been warned thatyoung wives were usually too extravagant, andwho consequently pinched and pared and cutcorners till she wore out her husband's patience.Before the second variation was half-read theclass was laughing outright. Each memberrealized that she, too, had seen the situation in


some purely personal light, and that what seemedso inevitable to her was fresh and unforeseen tothe others. I wish I could conclude this anecdoteby saying that I never again heard one of themcomplain that the only idea she could think of wastoo platitudinous to use, but this story reallyhappened.

Nevertheless it is true that not even twinswill see the same story idea from the same angle.There will always be differences of emphasis, achoice of different factors to bring about the di-lemma and different actions to solve it. If you canonce believe this thoroughly you can release foryour immediate use any idea which has enoughemotional value to engage your attention at all. Ifyou find yourself groping for a theme you maytake this as a fair piece of advice, simple as itsounds: "You can write about anything which hasbeen vivid enough to cause you to comment uponit." If a situation has caught your attention to thatextent, it has meaning for you, and if you can findwhat that meaning is you have the basis for astory.

Your Inalienable Uniqueness

Every piece of writing which is not simplythe purveying of straightforward information—


as a recipe or a formula is, for example —is anessay in persuasion. You are persuading yourreader, while you hold his attention, to see theworld with your eyes, to agree with you that thisis a stirring occasion, that that situation is essen-tially tragic, or that another is deeply humorous.All fiction is persuasive in this sense. The author'sconviction underlies all imaginative representa-tion of whatever grade.

Since this is so, it behooves you to know whatyou do believe of most of the major problems oflife, and of those minor problems which you aregoing to use in your writing.

A Questionnaire

Here are a few questions for a self-exam-ination which may suggest others to you. It isby no means an exhaustive questionnaire, butby following down the other inquiries whichoccur to you as you consider these, you can comeby a very fair idea of your working philosophy:

Do you believe in a God? Under what aspect?(Hardy's "President of the Immortals," Wells'"emerging God"?)

Do you believe in free will or are you a deter-minist? (Although an artist-determinist is such a


walking paradox that imagination staggers at thenotion.)

Do you like men? Women? Children?What do you think of marriage?Do you consider romantic love a delusion and a

snare?Do you think the comment "It will all be the

same in a hundred years" is profound, shallow, trueor false?

What is the greatest happiness you can imag-ine? The greatest disaster?

And so on. If you find that you are balking atdefinite answers to the great questions, then youare not yet ready to write fiction which involvesmajor issues. You must find subjects on which youare capable of making up your mind, to serve asthe groundwork of your writing. The best booksemerge from the strongest convictions — and forconfirmation see any bookshelf.

Thirteen

The Writer'sRecreation

Authors are more given than any other tribe to thetaking of busmen's holidays. In their off-hoursthey can usually be found reading in a corner, or,if thwarted in that, with other writers, talkingshop. A certain amount of shoptalk is valuable;too much of it is a drain. And too much reading isvery bad indeed.

Busmen's Holidays

All of us, whether we follow writing as acareer or not, are so habituated to words that we

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cannot escape them. If we are left alone longenough and forbidden to read, we will very soonbe talking to ourselves—"subvocally" as the be-haviorists say. This is the easiest thing in theworld to prove: starve yourself for a few hours in awordless void. Stay alone, and resist the temp-tation to take up any book, paper, or scrap ofprinted matter that you can find; also flee thetemptation to telephone someone when the strainbegins to make itself felt—for you will almostsurely scheme internally to be reading or talkingwithin a few minutes. In a very short while youwill find that you are using words at a tremen-dous rate: planning to tell an acquaintance justwhat you think of him, examining your con-science and giving yourself advice, trying to re-capture the words of a song, turning over the plotof a story; in fact, words have rushed in to fill thewordless vacuum.

Prisoners who never wrote a word in the daysof their freedom will write on any paper they canlay hands on. Innumerable books have beenbegun by patients lying on hospital beds, sen-tenced to silence and refused reading; the lastone to be reported was, I think, Margaret AyerBarnes' Years of Grace, and long ago I rememberreading that William Allen White's A Certain RichMan came to him when he was "tossing pebblesinto the sea" on an enforced vacation. A two-

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year-old will tell himself stories, and a farmer willtalk to a cow. Once we have learned to use wordswe must be forever using them.

Wordless Recreation

The conclusion should be plain. If you want tostimulate yourself into writing, amuse yourself inwordless ways. Instead of going to a theater, heara symphony orchestra, or go by yourself to amuseum; go alone for long walks, or ride by your-self on a bus-top. If you will conscientiously refuseto talk or read you will find yourself compensat-ing for it to your great advantage.

One very well-known writer of my acquaint-ance sits for two hours a day on a park bench. Hesays that for years he used to lie on the grass ofhis back garden and stare at the sky, but somemember of the family, seeing him so convenientlyalone and aimless, always seized the occasion tocome out and sit beside him for a nice talk. Sooneror later, he himself would begin to talk about thework he had in mind, and, to his astonishment, hediscovered that the urgent desire to write thestory disappeared as soon as he had got it thor-oughly talked out. Now, with a purposeful air andin mysterious silence, he disappears daily, andcan be found every afternoon (but fortunately


seldom is) with his hands in his pockets staring atthe pigeons in the park.

Another writer, almost tone-deaf, says thatshe can finish any story she starts if she can find ahall where a long symphony is being played. Thelights, the music, her immobility, bring on a sortof artistic coma, and she emerges in a sleepwalk-ing state which lasts till she reaches the type-writer.

Find Your Own Stimulus

Only experiment will show you what yourown best recreation is; but books, the theater, andtalking pictures should be very rarely indulged inwhen you have any piece of writing to finish. Thebetter the book or the play is the more likely it is,not only to distract you, but actually to alter yourmood, so that you return to your own writingwith your attitude changed.

A Variety of Time-Fillers

Most established authors have some way ofsilent recreation. One found that horseback rid-ing was the best relaxation for him; another, awoman, confessed that whenever she came to a

The Writer's Recreation 135

difficult spot in a novel she was writing, she gotup and played endless games of solitaire. (I be-lieve it was Mrs. Norris, and I think she went so faras to say that she was not always certain to see anace when she turned it up.) Another womannovelist found, during the war years, that shespun stories as fast as she knitted, and turned her-self into a Penelope of the knitting needle, ravel-ing a square of scarlet wool and starting on itagain whenever she had a story "simmering."Fishing served a writer of detective stories, andanother admits that he whittles aimlessly forhours. Still another said that she embroideredinitials on everything she could lay her hands on.

Only an impassioned author could call someof these occupations by any name so glamorousas "recreation"; but it is to be noticed that suc-cessful writers, when talking about themselves aswriters, say little about curling up in a corner witha good book. Much as they may love reading (andall authors would rather read than eat), they hadall learned from long experience that it is thewordless occupation which sets their own mindsbusily at work.

Fourteen

The Practice Story

A Recapitulation

When you have succeeded for some weeks inrising early and writing, and in the second step ofgoing off by yourself at a given moment and be-ginning to write, you are ready to combine thetwo; and you are within measurable distance ofbeing ready for the key procedure which everysuccessful artist knows. Why it is kept such a se-cret, and why it should take a different form in al-most every writer, is a mystery. Perhaps becauseeach worked it out for himself and so hardlyrealizes that it is a part of his special knowledge.But that is matter for another chapter. Now it is

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time to bring together the work of the consciousand unconscious in an elementary manner.

You were warned not to reread your own workbefore starting on each morning's writing. Youwere to try to tap the unconscious directly, notsimply to call up from it by way of association acertain limited set of ideas; and, further, if youwere to find your own stride it was necessary tofree you from the hampering effects of having anyexample before your eyes. A newspaper, a novel,the speech of someone else, or even your own writ-ing so long as you are under the influence ofothers—all have a circumscribing effect. We arevery easily drawn into a circle of ideas; we fall intothe rhythm of any book or newspaper we read.

The Contagiousness of Style

If you seriously doubt this, it is very easy todemonstrate how one can be caught up into thecurrent of another's style. Choose any writerwhose work has a strong rhythm, a decidedpersonal style: Dickens, Thackeray, Kipling,Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Mrs. Wharton,Wodehouse—anyone you like. Read your authoruntil you feel a little fatigue, the first momentaryflagging of attention. Put the book aside and write

The Practice Story 139

a few pages on any subject. Then compare thosepages with the writing you have done in the earlymorning. You will find a definite difference be-tween the two. You have insensibly altered yourown emphasis and inflection in the direction ofthe author's in whom you have been engrossed.Sometimes the similarity is so striking as to bealmost ludicrous, although you intended noparody—may even have intended to write as in-dependently as possible. We can leave it to thepsychologists to discover that this is so, and toexplain why it should be.

Find Your Own Style

The important matter is to find your ownstyle, your own subjects, your own rhythm, sothat every element in your nature can contributeto the work of making a writer of you. Study yourown pages; among them you are to find someidea — preferably, this time, a fairly simple one— which offers you a good, obvious nucleus fora short story, an expanded anecdote (say, of TheNew Yorker's style), or a brief essay. Story materialwill be best. Anything that is there in your earlymorning work has real value for you. You willhave something to say on the subject which is


more than superficial comment. Abstract youridea from its too discursive setting and get downto the matter of considering it seriously.

The Story in Embryo

What shall you make of it? Remember, youare to look for a simple idea—something that canbe finished in one sitting. Then, in that case, whatwill it need? Emphasis? Characters to embody inconcrete form the speculations you have made inyour sleepy state? Does it need to have certain fac-tors made very plain, so that the conflict, what-ever it is, runs no danger of seeming unimportantor of being overlooked? When you have decidedwhat can and should be made of it, consider thedetails with care.

The Preparatory Period

Mind you, you are not yet to write it. The workyou are doing on it is preliminary. For a day or twoyou are going to immerse yourself in these details;you are going to think about them consciously,turning if necessary to books of reference to fill inyour facts. Then you are going to dream about it.You are going to think of the characters sepa-


rately, then in combination. You are going to doeverything you can for that story by using alter-nately your conscious intelligence and uncon-scious reverie on it. There will seem no end to thestuff that you can find to work over. What does theheroine look like? Was she an only child, or the el-dest of seven? How was she educated? Does shework? Now perform the same labor on the hero,and on any secondary characters you need tobring the story to life. Then turn your attention tothe scene, and to those background scenes in eachcharacter's life which you may never need to writeof, but a knowledge of which will make yourfinished story that much more convincing.*

When you have done everything you can inthis way, say to yourself: "At ten o'clock on Wed-nesday I will begin to write it," and then dismiss itfrom your mind. Now and then it will rise to thesurface. You need not reject it with violence, but

*In his latest book, It Was the Nightingale, Ford Madox Ford says, onjust this point: "I may—and quite frequently do—plan out everyscene, sometimes even every conversation, in a novel before I sitdown to write it. But unless I know the history back to the remotesttimes of any place of which I am going to write I cannot begin thework. And I must know—from personal observation, not reading,the shapes of windows, the nature of doorknobs, the aspect of kitch-ens, the material of which dresses are made, the leather used inshoes, the method used in manuring fields, the nature of bus tickets.I shall never use any of these things in the book. But unless I knowwhat sort of doorknob his fingers closed on how shall I —satis-factorily to myself—get my character out of doors?" This book willbe found full of valuable sidelights on the process of literature.


reject it. You are not ready for it yet; let it subsideagain. Three days will do it no harm, will evenhelp it. But when ten o'clock strikes on Wednes-day you sit down to work.

Writing Confidently

Now; strike out at once. Just as you madeyourself do the time exercises in the sixth chapter,take no excuses, refuse to feel any stage fright;simply start working. If a good first sentence doesnot come, leave a space for it and write it in later.Write as rapidly as possible, with as little atten-tion to your own processes as you can give. Try towork lightly and quickly, beginning and endingeach sentence with a good, clear stroke. Rereadvery little—only a sentence or two now and thento be sure you are on the true course.

In this way you can train yourself into good,workmanlike habits. The typewriter or the writ-ing pad should not appear to you a good place tolose yourself in musing, or to work out mattersyou should have cleared up before. You may find itvery helpful, before you begin to write, to settle ona first and last sentence for your story. Then youcan use the first sentence as a springboard fromwhich to dive into your work, and the last as a raftto swim toward.


A Finished Experiment

The exercise must end with a completed pieceof work, no matter how long you labor at it. Lateryou will learn how to do writing which cannot befinished at a sitting; the best way is to make an-other engagement with yourself before you risefrom the typewriter, and while the heat of work isstill on you. You will find if you do this that youwill come to meet yourself, as it were, in the samemood, and there will not be a noticeable altera-tion in the manner of your writing between onesession and the next. But this story is to befinished on the day you begin it.

Whether or not you are going to like it when youread it later, whether or not you decide that you cando a better version of it if you try again, the exerciseis not done properly unless you rise from the sessionwith a complete practice story.

Time for Detachment

Put it away, and if your curiosity will let you,leave it alone for two or three days. At the veryleast let it stay unread overnight. Your judgmenton it until you have slept is worth exactly nothing.One of two states of mind will interfere with anyearlier appraisal. If you belong to one half the


writing race, you will be worn and discouraged,and, reading your own story over with fatigueclouding every line, you will think it the dullest,most improbable, flattest tale ever told. Even ifyou reread it more favorably later when you arefreshened by sleep and diversion, a memory ofthat first verdict is likely to cause you to wonderwhich of the judgments is right. And if the story isrejected by the first editor who sees it, you arelikely to think that it is as bad as you feared, andyou may refuse to give it another chance.

The other half of the brotherhood seems notto use up the last ounce of its energy in getting astory to its close. They, on reading their recent ef-fort, will be still held by the impulse which setthem writing in the first place. If they have falleninto errors of judgment, if they have been too ver-bose or compact, the same astigmatism that wasresponsible for the mistake in the first place willstill operate to blind them to it.

You are simply not ready to read your storyobjectively when it is newly finished; and thereare writers who cannot trust their objectivitytoward their own work much under a month. Soput it away and turn your attention to somethingelse. Now is the time of times for the readingwhich you have been denying yourself. Your storyis safely written, and will preserve the marks ofyour personality so tenaciously that not the


deepest admiration for the work of another writerwill be likely to endanger it. If even reading seemstoo great an effort, find some mild relaxationwhich takes your at tent ion quite away fromauthorship. If you can make a definite break inyour routine just here, so much the better. Somewriters have an immediate impulse to begin workon another story; if you feel it, by all means give into it. But if you feel that you never want to seepaper and typewriter again, indulge yourself inthat mood, too.

The Critical Reading

When you are refreshed, relaxed, and de-tached, take out your story and read it.

The chances are that you will find a great dealmore in your manuscript than you are consciousof having put there. Something was at work foryou while you wrote. Scenes which you thoughtabsolutely vital to the proper telling of the storyare not there at all; other scenes which you hadnot planned to write take their places. The char-acters have traits you had hardly realized. Theyhave said things you had not thought of havingthem say. Here is a sentence cleverly emphasizedwhich you had thought of as only a casual state-ment, but which needed that emphasis if the story


was to be shapely. In short, you have written bothless and more than you intended. Your consciousmind had less to do with it, your unconsciousmind more, than you would have believedpossible.

Fifteen

The Great Discovery

The Five-Finger Exercises of Writing

Now those are the five-finger exercises ofwriting. To recapitulate before we go further, foryou can hardly hear too often these primarytruths about your art, the writer (like every artist)is a dual personality. In him the unconsciousflows freely. He has trained himself so that thephysical effort of writing does not tire him out ofall proportion to the effect he achieves. His intel-lect directs, criticizes, and discriminates wher-ever two possible courses present themselves, insuch a way as to leave the more sensitive elementof his nature free to bring forth its best fruit. He

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learns to use his intellect both cursively, as heworks, and later, as he considers what he has doneduring the period of the creative flow. He replacesby conscious intention, and day by day, the drainsmade on his funds of images, sensations, andideas, by keeping awake to new observations.Ideally, the two sides of his nature are at peacewith each other and work in harmony; at the leasthe must be able to suppress one or the other atdiscretion. Each side of his character must learnto be able to trust the other to do what is in itsfield and to carry the full responsibility for itsown work. He restrains each side of his mind to itsown functions, never allowing the conscious tousurp the privilege of the unconscious, and viceversa.

Now we go a little more deeply into the con-tribution of the unconscious, and the piece ofwriting you have just finished is your laboratoryspecimen. If you have worked according to in-structions, foreseeing as many of the points ofyour story as you were able to, if you thought anddaydreamed about the story without beginning towrite prematurely; if then when you had prom-ised yourself to write you got straight to workwithout hesitation or apology, it is very nearlycertain that the resulting piece of writing will beboth shapelier and fuller than you could have ex-pected. The story will be balanced in a way which

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seems more adroit than you would have believedpossible. The characters will be more fully, moreexpertly drawn, and at the same time drawn withmore economy, than if you had labored at themwith all your conscious mind in action. In short, afaculty has been at work which so far we havehardly considered. The higher imagination, youmay call it; your own endowment of genius, greator small; the creative aspect of your mind, whichis lodged almost entirely in the unconscious.

The Root of Genius

For the root of genius is in the unconscious,not the conscious, mind. It is not by weighing,balancing, trimming, expanding with consciousintention, that an excellent piece of art is born. Ittakes its shape and has its origin outside the re-gion of the conscious intellect. There is much thatthe conscious can do, but it cannot provide youwith genius, or with the talent that is genius' sec-ond cousin.

Unconscious, Not Subconscious

But we are badly handicapped when we cometo talk or write of it, for the mind is not yet fully


explored. And there is an even more serious diffi-culty to be encountered. When the Freudian psy-chology first reached us, we began to hear, unfor-tunately for us, about the sub conscious. Freudhimself has corrected that error in terminology,and it is the unconscious that is now mentioned inthe canonical works. But for most of us, that un-lucky "sub" carried a derogatory connotation,and we have not entirely freed ourselves from theidea that the unconscious is, in some way, a lesslaudable part of our makeup than our consciousmind. F.W.H. Myers, in his excellent chapter on"Genius" in Human Personality (which should beread by every prospective author), fell subject tothe same temptation and spoke continually of the"subliminal uprush." Now the unconscious is not,in its entirety, either below or less than the con-scious mind. It includes in its scope everythingwhich is not in the forefront of our consciousness,and has a reach as far above our average intellectas it has depths below.

The Higher Imagination

This spatial terminology is also unfortunate.The thing to realize is that the unconscious mustbe trusted to bring you aid from a higher levelthan that on which you ordinarily function. Any


art must draw on this higher content of the un-conscious as well as on the memories and emo-tions stored away there. A sound and gifted per-son is one who draws on and uses continuallythese resources, who lives in peace and amitywith all the reaches of his being; not one who sup-presses, at the cost of infinite energy and vitality,every echo from the far region.

Come to Terms with the Unconscious

The unconscious should not be thought of as alimbo where vague, cloudy, and amorphous no-tions swim hazily about. There is every reason tobelieve, on the contrary, that it is the great homeof form; that it is quicker to see types, patterns,purposes, than our intellect can ever be. Always, itis true, you must be on the watch lest a too headyexuberance sweep you away from a straightcourse; always you must direct and control theexcess of material which the unconscious will of-fer. But if you are to write well you must come toterms with the enormous and powerful part ofyour nature which lies behind the threshold ofimmediate knowledge.

If you can learn to do this, you have less tir-ing, difficult labor to perform than you believedyou had when you first turned to writing. There is


a great field of technical knowledge which thewriter can study, many shortcuts to effectivenesswhich can be learned by taking thought. Yet onthe whole it is the unconscious which will decideon both the form and the matter of the workwhich you are planning, and which will, if you canlearn to rely on it, give you a far better and moreconvincing result if you are not continuallymeddling with its processes and imposing on ityour own notions of the plausible, the desirable,the persuasive, according to some formula whichyou have painstakingly extracted from a work onthe technique of fiction, or laboriously plottedout for yourself from long study of stories in print.

The Artistic Comaand the Writer's Magic

The true genius may live his life long withoutever realizing how he works. He will know onlythat there are times when he must, at all costs,have solitude; time to dream, to sit idle. Often hehimself believes that his mind is empty. Some-times we hear of gifted men who are on the vergeof despair because they feel they are going througha "barren" period; but suddenly the time of si-lence is past, and they have reached the moment


when they must write. That strange, aloof, de-tached period has been called "the artistic coma"by observers shrewd enough to see that the idle-ness is only a surface stillness. Something is atwork, but so deeply and wordlessly that it hardlygives a sign of its activity till it is ready to exter-nalize its vision. The necessity which the artistfeels to indulge himself in solitude, in ramblingleisure, in long speechless periods, is behind mostof the charges of eccentricity and boorishnessthat are leveled at men of genius. If the period isrecognized and allowed for, it need not have a dis-ruptive effect. The artist will always be markedby occasional periods of detachment; the name-less faculty will always announce itself by an airof withdrawal and indifference, but it is possibleto hasten the period somewhat, and to have it, to alimited extent, under one's control. To be able toinduce at will the activity of that higher imagi-nation, that intuition, that artistic level of theunconscious — that is where the artist's magiclies, and is his only true "secret."

Sixteen

The Third Person,Genius

The Writer Not Dual But Triple

So, almost insensibly, one arrives at the un-derstanding that the writer's nature is not dualbut triple. The third member of the partnershipis—feeble or strong, constantly or spasmodicallyshowing—one's individual endowment of genius.The flashes of insight, the penetrating intuitions,the imagination which combines and transmutesordinary experience into "the illusion of a high-er reality" — all these necessities of art, or, on ahumbler level, all these necessities of any inter-pretation of life, come from a region beyond those

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we have been studying and learning to con-trol. For most practical purposes it is enough todivide our minds roughly into conscious and un-conscious; it is quite possible to live a lifetime(even the lifetime of an artist) without even somuch comprehension of the mind's complexity.Yet by recognizing this third component of yournature, by understanding its importance to yourwriting, by learning to liberate it, to clear ob-structions from its path so that it may flow un-impeded into your work, you perform the mostvital service of which you are capable to yourselfas a writer.

The Mysterious Faculty

Now you begin to see the basis of truth forthat discouraging statement, "Genius cannot betaught." In a sense, of course, that is the literaltruth; but the implications are almost entirelymisleading. You cannot add one grain to this fac-ulty by all your conscious efforts, but there is noreason why you should desire to. Its resources atthe feeblest are fuller than you can ever exhaust.What we need is not to add to that natural en-dowment, but to learn to use it. The great menof every period and race—so great that we callthem, for simplicity's sake, by the name of that

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one faculty alone, as though in them it existedwith no admixture, the "geniuses" —are thosewho were able to free more of that faculty for usein their lives and in their works of art than the restof mankind. No human being is so poor as to haveno trace of genius; none so great that he comeswithin infinity of using his own inheritance tothe full.

The average man fears, distrusts, ignores, orknows nothing of that element of his nature. Inmoments of deep emotion, in danger, in joy, occa-sionally when long sickness has quieted the bodyand the mind, sometimes in a remote, dim ap-prehension which we bring back with us fromsleep, or from moments under an anesthetic,everyone has intimations of it. Traces of it may beseen at its most unmistakable and mysterious inthe lives of the prodigies of music* Howevermysterious and incomprehensible it is, it exists;and it is no more "an infinite capacity for takingpains" —as the old definition of genius wouldhave it —than "inspiration is perspiration"; apure American delusion if ever there was one. Theprocess of transmitting one's intuitive knowledge,of conveying one's insight at all satisfactorily,may be infinitely laborious. Years may be spentfinding the words to set forth the illumination of a

*Read any account of Mozart's life, for example.


moment. But to confuse the labor with the geniusthat instigated it is to be misled. When one learnsto release this faculty even inexpertly, or when itis released fortuitously, one finds that so far fromhaving to toil anxiously and painstakingly for hiseffects one experiences, on the contrary, the mira-cle of being carried along on the creative current.

Releasing Genius

Often the release does come accidentally. It ispossible for an artist to count on the energy fromthis region to carry out a book, story, a picture,and yet never recognize it. He may even go so faras to deny that any such thing as "genius" is inquestion. He will assure you that, in his experi-ence, it is all a matter of "getting into his stride";but what getting into his stride implies he maynever know, even though in that happy state hewrites pages of clarity and beauty beyond any-thing of which he is capable in his pedestrianmoments. Another may, in a burst of candor, tellyou that after mulling an idea over till his headaches he comes to a kind of dead end: he can nolonger think about his story or even understandwhy it once appealed to him. Much later, when heis least expecting it, the idea returns, mysteri-ously rounded and completed, ready for trans-


cribing. And so on. Most successful writers arriveat their own method of releasing this faculty by atrial-and-error process, so obscure that they canseldom offer a beginner in search of the secret somuch as a rule-of-thumb. Their reports of theirwriting habits are so at variance with each otherthat it is no wonder the young writer sometimesfeels that his elders are all engaged in a conspir-acy to delude and mislead him as to the actualprocess of literature.

Rhythm, Monotony, Silence

There is no conspiracy; there is, I should say,remarkably little jealousy or personal envy be-tween writers. They will tell you what they can,but the more instinctively they are artists theless they are able to analyze their ways of work-ing. What one finally gets, after long cross-questionings, after raking through reports, is noexplanation, but usually simple statements ofpersonal experience. They agree in reporting thatthe idea of a book or story is usually apprehendedin a flash. At that moment many of the characters,many of the situations, the story's outcome, allmay be —either dimly or vividly —prefigured.Then there is a period of intensive thinking andworking over of the ideas. With some authors this


is a period of great excitement; they seem intoxi-cated with the possibilities there before theirminds. Later comes a quiescent period; and sincealmost every writer alive occupies himself insome quite idiosyncratic way in that interlude, itis seldom noticed that these occupations have akind of common denominator. Horseback riding;knitting; shuffling and dealing cards; walking;whittl ing; you see they have a common de-nominator — of three figures, one might say. Allthese occupations are rhythmical, monotonous,and wordless. And that is our key.

In other words, every author, in some waywhich he has come on by luck or long search, putshimself into a very light state of hypnosis. The at-tention is held, but just held; there is no seriousdemand on it. Far behind the mind's surface, sodeep that he is seldom aware (unless at last obser-vation of himself has taught him) that any activ-ity is going forward, his story is being fused andwelded into an integrated work.

A Floor to Scrub

With no more clue than that you might beable to find some such occupation of your own; oryou may recognize in some recurrent habit thepromise of an occupation which would be useful


to you. But the disadvantage of most of these ac-cidentally discovered time-fillers is that they areonly rude expedients. When they have been foundthey are seldom abandoned. Indeed, many writ-ers reach a state of real superstition about themethod which has worked for them. "I'd be allright if I had a floor to scrub," one of my pupilssaid to me, a professor's wife who had written inthe intervals of bringing up a large family, andhad found that her stories fell into line best whenshe was at work on the kitchen floor. A little suc-cess had brought her to the city to study; she con-vinced herself completely that she would be un-able to write again till she got back to the rhyth-mical monotony of the scrubbing brush. This is anextreme case; but there are many famous authorswith superstitions just as stubbornly and firmly,although less outspokenly, held as my middle-western housemother's. And indeed most of themethods which have been discovered acciden-tally are as arbitrary, wasteful, and haphazard asscrubbing floors.

There is a way to shorten that "incubatingperiod" and produce a better piece of work. Andthat way is the writer's magic which you havebeen promised.

Seventeen

The Writer's Magic

X Is to Mind as Mind to Body

Let us pretend, for convenience, that this fac-ulty, this genius which is present in all of us to agreater or less degree, has been isolated, ana-lyzed, and studied; and found to stand in rela-tion to the mind as the mind stands to the body. Ifthe word "genius" is still too magniloquent a wordfor comfort, if you fear that under a wily guiseyou are being introduced to a spiritual qualitywhich discomfits you, bear with the notions alittle while, and call the faculty under consid-eration just ordinary X. Now X is to be thoughtof like a factor in an algebraic equation —

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X : Mind :: Mind : Body. In order to think inten-sively you hold your body still; at the most youengage it in some light, mechanical task whichyou can carry on like an automaton. To get X intoaction, then, you must quiet the mind.

This, you will observe, is exactly what thoserhythmical, monotonous, wordless activities hadas their obscure end: they were designed to holdmind as well as body in a kind of suspension whilethe higher, or deeper, faculty was at work. Insofaras they were successful, they were adopted andused over and over. But they are usually awkward,unsatisfactory, and not always uniform in theirresults. Moreover, they usually take far more timethan the unknown quality needs to fulfill its func-tions. So, if you are fortunate enough to be ayoung writer who has not yet found a formula forthat gestation period of the story, you are in aposition to learn a quicker and better way to at-tain the same end.

Hold Your Mind Still

It is, in short, this: learn to hold your mind asstill as your body.

For some this advice is so easy to take thatthey cannot believe anyone has difficulty in fol-lowing it. If you belong to that happy group, do

The Writer's Magic 165

not try any of the more intensive exercises thatfollow. You do not need them, and they will onlyconfuse you. But as you come to this spot in thebook, close the book over your finger and shutyour eyes, holding your mind, for only a few sec-onds, as still as you can.

Were you successful—even if for only a frac-tion of a moment? If you have never tried it before,you may be surprised and confounded to find howbusy, fluttering, and restless your mind seems."The chattering monkey," an Indian will say of hismind, half in scorn, half in indulgence; much asSt. Francis of Assisi called his body, "My Brother,the Ass." "It skitters around like a water bug!" oneexperimenter exclaimed, in surprise. But it willstop skittering for you, after a little practice; atleast it will be still enough to suit your purposes.

Practice in Control

The best practice is to repeat this procedureonce a day for several days. Simply close your eyeswith the idea of holding your mind quite steady,but feeling no urgency or tension about it. Once aday; don't push it or attempt to force it. As youbegin to get results, make the period a littlelonger, but never strain at it.

If you discover that you cannot learn to do it


so easily, try this way: Choose a simple object, like achild's gray rubber ball. (It is better not to selectanything with a bright surface or a decided high-light.) Hold the ball in your hand and look at it,confining your attention to that one simple ob-ject, and calling your mind back to it quietlywhenever it begins to wander. When you are ableto think of the object and nothing else for somemoments, take the next step. Close your eyes andgo on looking at the ball, thinking of nothing else.Then see if you can let even that simple idea slipaway.

The last method is to let your mind skitter allit pleases, watching it indulgently as it moves.Presently it will grow quieter. Don't hurry it. If itwill not be entirely quiet, it will probably be stillenough.

The Story Idea as the Object

When you have succeeded, even a little, tryholding a story idea, or a character, in your mind,and letting your stillness center around that.Presently you will see the almost incredible re-sults. Ideas which you held rather academicallyand unconvincingly will take on color and form;a character that was a puppet will move andbreathe. Consciously or unconsciously every suc-cessful writer who ever lived calls on this facultyto put the breath of life into his creations.


Now you are ready to try the process in moreextended form.

The Magic in Operation

Since this is practice work only (althoughmore may come of the ideas you practice on thanyou expect) you may go at it rather mechanically.Choose any story idea at random. If you do not liketo use one of your own cherished plots for this,here is a variation that will work as well: replacethe character of a well-known book by someoneyou know in real life. If your sister had played therole of Becky Sharp, for example, what coursewould Vanity Fair have had to follow? SupposeGulliver had been a woman? How vague, stiff, orincomplete the idea is, is of no importance. Forour purposes, the less satisfactory it seems at themoment the more complete the demonstration ofthe method's effectiveness. Make a rough outlineof the story. Decide on the main characters, thenthe secondary characters. See as plainly as possi-ble what crucial situation you would like to putthem into, and how you would like to leave themat the end. Don't worry about getting them eitherin or out of their dilemma; simply see them in it,and then see it resolved. Remember here thecircle-and-ring experiment, and that envisagingthe end was enough to set the means in motion.


Think over the whole story in a sort of pleasant,indulgent mood, correcting any obvious absurd-ities, reminding yourself of this or that itemwhich you would like to include if it could bebrought in naturally.

Now take that rough draft of a story out for awalk with you. You are going to walk till you arejust mildly tired, and at that time you should beback at your starting place; gauge your distanceby that. Get into a smooth and easy swing, notvigorous and athletic—a lazy, loafing walk is bet-ter at first, although it may become more rapidlater. Now think about your story; let yourself beengrossed in it—but think of it as a story, not ofhow you are going to write it, or what means youwill use to get this or that effect. Refuse to letyourself be diverted by anything outside. As youcircle back to your starting place, think of thestory's end, as though you were laying it asideafter reading it.

Inducing the "Artistic Coma"

Now bathe, still thinking of it in a desultoryway, and then go into a dim room. Lie down, flaton your back; the alternative position, to be cho-sen only if you find that the other makes you toodrowsy, is to sit not quite fully relaxed in a low,


large chair. When you have taken a comfortableposition, do not move again: make your bodyquiet. Then quiet your mind. Lie there, not quiteasleep, not quite awake.

After a while—it may be twenty minutes, itmay be an hour, it may be two—you will feel adefinite impulse to rise, a kind of surge of energy.Obey it at once; you will be in a slightly somnam-bulistic state indifferent to everything on earthexcept what you are about to write; dull to all theouter world but vividly alive to the world of yourimagination. Get up and go to your paper ortypewriter, and begin to write. The state you arein at that moment is the state an artist works in.

Valedictory

How good a piece of work emerges dependson you and your life: how sensitive, how dis-criminating you are, how closely your experiencereflects the experience of your potential readers,how thoroughly you have taught yourself the ele-ments of good prose writing, how good an ear youhave for rhythm. But, limited or not, you will find,if you have followed the exercises, that you canbring forth a shapely, integrated piece of work bythis method. It will have flaws, no doubt; but youwill be able to see them objectively and work on


eradicating them. By these exercises you havemade yourself into a good instrument for the useof your own genius. You are flexible and sturdy,like a good tool. You know what it feels like towork as an artist.

Now read all the technical books on the writ-ing of fiction that you can find. You are at last in aposition to have them do you some good.

In Conclusion:Some Prosaic Pointers

Typewriting

As soon as you can, learn to typewrite. Then,if possible, learn to compose on the typewriter.Unless you write very rapidly and plainly, a firstdraft written by hand is usually one long wastemotion. But be sure that you are sacrificingnothing in making the shift from handwriting towriting on a machine. There are persons whoare never able to get the same qualities in themachine-written work which they can catch bythe more leisurely method. Write two rather simi-lar ideas, one by each method; compare the two. Ifthe typewritten draft is more abrupt, if you find

171


that ideas escape you there which are found inyour handwritten draft, composing at the type-writer is not your proper method.

Have Two Typewriters

The professional writer should have twotypewriters, a standard machine and a port-able — preferably a noiseless portable. Choosemachines with the same typeface; they shouldboth be pica, or both be elite. This will enable youto write at your own convenience, in any room, atany free moment, or when traveling. And you canalso leave an incompleted piece of work in themachine, as a mute reproach —if you find youneed that.

Stationery

Raid a stationery store. There are innumera-ble pencils on the market, of all grades of softnessand several colors. Try them all; you may find theideal pencil for your purposes. A medium-softlead is best for most writers: the pages do notsmudge, yet no particular pressure is necessarywhen writing.

Try bond paper and "laid" paper —paper

In Conclusion: Some Prosaic Pointers 173

with a sleek, smooth finish. Many amateurs use abond paper because they have never had the goodfortune to find the smoother finish, yet the grainin a bond paper may irritate them like the feelingof painted china.

Try writing on loose paper, on pads of varioussizes, and in notebooks. Have a notebook full offresh sheets ready to take on any short journey. Ona long journey carry typewriter paper and a port-able machine, and make the most of your time.

Don't buy the heaviest and most impressivegrade of bond paper for your finished manu-scripts. It makes too bulky and heavy a package,and the paper shows wear more quickly than theless expensive grades. "A good sixteen-poundpaper," is the way to ask for what you need. If theclerk doesn't understand you, find a better sta-tionery store.

At the Typewriter: WRITE!

Teach yourself as soon as possible to work themoment you sit down to a machine, or settle your-self with pad and pencil. If you find yourselfdreaming there, or biting your pencil end, get upand go to the farthest corner of the room. Staythere while you are getting up steam. When youhave your first sentence ready, go back to your


tools. If you steadily refuse to lose yourself in rev-erie at your worktable, you will be rewarded byfinding that merely taking your seat there will beenough to make your writing flow.

If you are unable to finish a piece of work atone sitting, make an engagement with yourself toresume work before you rise from the table. You willfind that this acts like a posthypnotic suggestion,in more ways than one. You will get back to thework without delay, and you will pick up the samenote with little difficulty, so that your story willnot show as many different styles as a patchworkquilt when it is done.

For Coffee Addicts

If you have an ingrained habit of putting offeverything until after you have had your morningcoffee, buy a thermos bottle and fill it at night.This will thwart your wily unconscious in theneatest fashion. You will have no excuse to post-pone work while you wait for your stimulant.

Coffee Versus Maté

If you tend to drink a great deal of coffee whenin the throes of composition, try replacing half of

In Conclusion: Some Prosaic Pointers 175

it by maté, a South American drink much like tea,but stimulating and innocuous. It can be boughtat any large grocer's, and is very easy to prepare.

Reading

If you are writing a manuscript so long thatthe prospect of not reading at all until you havefinished is too intolerable, be sure to choose bookswhich are as unlike your own work as possible:read technical books, history, or, best of all, booksin other languages.

Book and Magazine Buying

Have periodical debauches of book-buyingand magazine-buying, and try to formulate toyourself the editor's possible requirements fromthe type of periodical he issues. Buy a good hand-book on fiction markets, and whenever you findan editor asking for manuscripts which sound likethe type you are interested in writing, send for acopy of the magazine if you cannot buy it nearerhome.

Bibliography

Edith Wharton, The Writing of Fiction, Scribner, 1925.A. Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing, Putnam, 1916.A. Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Reading, Putnam, 1920.Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction, Scribner, 1921.E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, Harcourt, Brace,

1927.The Novels of Henry James, Definitive Edition,

Scribner, 1917. In particular, see Preface to The IvoryTower.

Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought, Harcourt, Brace,1926.

Mary Austin, Everyman's Genius, Bobbs Merrill, 1925.Thomas Uzzell, Narrative Technique, Harcourt, Brace,

1923.F.W.H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of

Bodily Death, Longmans, Green, 1920. In particular,see the chapter on Genius.

Edith Wharton, "The Confessions of a Novelist." Atlan-tic Monthly, April, 1933.

Percy Marks, The Craft of Writing, Harcourt, Brace,1932.

177


S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. Various editions.Conversations of Eckermann with Goethe, tr. by John

Oxenford, Dutton, 1931.Longinus, On the Sublime, tr. by W. Rhys Roberts,

Macmillan, 1930.Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism. Various editions.William Archer, Play-Making, Dodd, Mead, 1912.George Saintsbury, History of English Prose Rhythm,

Macmillan, 1922.Charles Williams, The English Poetic Mind, Oxford,

1932.Anonymous, The Literary Spotlight, Doran.24 English Authors, Mr. Fothergill's Plot, Oxford, 1931.Douglas Bement, Weaving the Short Story, Richard R.

Smith, 1931.Ford Madox Ford, It Was the Nightingale, Lippincott,

1933.Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Doran,

1910.T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, Harcourt, Brace, 1932.Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, Harcourt, Brace,

1925.Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday, Harcourt, Brace,

1921.The Journals of Katherine Mansfield, edited by J. Mid-

dleton Murry, Knopf, 1927.Storm Jameson, The Georgian Novel and Mr. Robinson,

Morrow, 1929.Blanche Colton Williams, Handbook on Story Writing,

Dodd, Mead, 1930.Henry Seidel Canby, Better Writing, Harcourt, Brace,

1926.

Bibliography 179

Paul Elmer More, The Shelburne Essays, 11 vols.,Houghton Mifflin.

Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon, Houghton Mifflin,1910.

Lafcadio Hearn, Talks to Writers, Dodd, Mead, 1920.

And, finally, those who read French will treble thenumber of these books by the works of Sainte-Beuve,Remy de Gourmont, Gustave Flaubert, the Journals ofthe brothers Goncourt, Jules Lemaître, Paul Valéry,André Gide (see particularly Les Faux-Monnayeurs, orthe excellent English translation, published in thiscountry under the title The Counterfeiters, Knopf,1927).

Index

Advice, frame of mind fortaking, 61 — 67

"Art of Fiction, The"(James), quoted,114

"Artistic coma," 134,152-153. See alsoHypnotic state;Mind, stilling the

inducing, 163-169Autobiographical nature

of fiction, 30

Blocks, writing, 28- 32

Character development,91

Confessions of a Novelist,The (Wharton),quoted, 126

Consciousness. See alsoUnconscious

control function, 48protective function,

49-52and story formation,

46-48and the unconscious,

57-58of the writer, 38-41,

44,147-148and writing prepara-

tion, 140-141Control

and consciousness, 48gaining, of writing,

75-79in stilling the mind,

164-166Courses, writing, 21-22,

28, 86-87. See alsoTeachers

Creativity, 158. See alsoGenius

181


Criticismin courses, 86— 87self-protection, 49— 52of work of others,

99-104Criticism, self-, 53,

89-97. See also Self-examination

of daily routines,95-96

delaying, 56-57method, 90- 94of work, 82, 143-145

Daydreaming, 69-71Dialogue, uses of, 91- 92Difficulties, nontechni-

cal, 28-34,42-43inability to repeat a

success, 29—30lack of fluency, 28-29sterile periods, 31-32repetitiousness, 113triteness, 125-126uneven writing, 32— 33

Exercisesfor fluency, 72-74and frame of mind,

66-67in observation,

114-117in reading critically,

100-103

in self-criticism,90-95

in self-examination,58-59,95-97,129-130

in stilling the mind(meditation),165-169

story writing, 140-146in writing on schedule,

76-79

Fiction writingautobiographical

nature of, 30importance of, 19- 20and persuasion, 129

Fluencyexercises, 72-74lack of, 28-29and the unconscious,

71-74Ford, Ford Madox,It Was

the Nightingale,quoted, 141n

Genius, 155-159actions of, 40-41characteristics, 38, 111common to everyone,

157and consciousness, 40,

41,48and creativity, 158

Index 183

releasing, 158-161,163-169

term as used byF.W.H. Meyers, 40

and the unconscious,41,48,118,149

Habitschanging, 62-66senses dulled by,

111-112workmanlike, 142,

173-174Handbooks

fiction markets, 175pessimistic, 26

Human Personality(Meyers), 150

Hypnotic state, activi-ties inducing, 160-161. See also "Artisticcoma"; Mind,stilling the

Imaginationdemonstration, 64- 66vs. will power, 62— 66

Imitationpitfalls of, 83-84,

121-123for practice, method,

105of style, 138-139of techniques, 106-109

"Incubating period," 47,160-161,164. See alsoPreparatory period

Individualityand originality,

120-130"Innocence of eye"

of the genius, 38recapturing, 114-117

It Was the Nightingale(Ford), quoted, 141n

James, Henry, "The Art ofFiction," quoted, 114

MacKenzie, Agnes Mure,The Process ofLiterature, quoted,125

Meditation. See Mind,stilling the

Meyers, F.W.H., HumanPersonality, cited, 150

Mind, stilling the (medi-tation), 160-161,164-169. See also"Artistic coma"

exercises, 165-169Monotonous writing,

counteracting,108-110

Morning, writing in,72-74

Music as a writing aid, 54


Nontechnical problems,25-34

Objectivityand self-examination,

58-59toward own work, 143

Observationsdullness of, 111-112exercises, 114-117and the unconscious,

117-118verbalizing, 117

"One-book authors,"29-30

Originalityand individuality,

120-130and self-knowledge,

123-124,128-129source of, 119-126

Personality factors,25-41 passim. Seealso Consciousness;Unconscious

Poiti, Georges, TheThirty-six DramaticSituations, 124

Popular opinion, self-protection against,49-52

Preparatory period,

140-142. See also"Incubating period"

Process of Literature, The(MacKenzie),quoted, 125

Readingas an aid to writing,

55-56,99-104analyzing, 99-110avoiding before

writing, 72-73to increase vocabulary,

109work dissimilar to

own, 175Recreation, wordless,

131-135Repetitiousness, causes

of, 112-113Resistance, unconscious,

78-79Routines, daily, 95-96

Scheduling writing,75-79

exercises, 76- 79"Second wind," 71-72

and genius, 40-41Self-confidence, 87Self-examination, 53,

84-85, 95-96. Seealso Criticism, self-

Index 185

exercise, 58-59and originality,

123-124,128-130questionnaire, 129-

130Self-protection, 49- 52Sensations, dulled,

111-112exercises for, 114-118and repetitious

writing, 112-113Social activities as an aid

to writing, 54-55Stationery, 172-173Sterile periods, 31Stimulants

avoidance of continualuse, 96

coffee, 174maté, 175to writing, 54-55

Story formationand consciousness,

46-48process, 45-48synthesis by the

unconscious, 47,160

Story writing practiceexercise, 142-146preparatory period,

140-142Style

unconscious imitation,138-139

unique, finding,139-140

Synthesis of stories bythe unconscious, 47,160

Talking about writing,avoiding, 51-52

Teachers, suggestions to,86-87

Techniques, studying,106-109

Themes, dramatic,124-128

Thirty-six DramaticSituations, The(Polti), 124

Time, passage of, convey-ing, 106-107

Triteness, 125-126Types and the uncon-

scious, 46Typewriting, 72—73,

171-172

Unconsciousand consciousness,

57-58and genius, 42, 48,149and new observations,

117-118


Unconscious (continued)and resistance to writ-

ing, 78-79and story formation,

45-48synthesizing function,

47tapping and directing,

48and types, 46of the writer, 38-41, 44using in writing,

69-74,140-142,145-153,159-161,164-169

"Unwritten Novel, An"(Woolf), cited,116n

Vocabulary, Increasing,109-110

Wharton, Edith, TheConfessions of a

Novelist, quoted, 126;The Writing of Fic-tion, quoted, 92

Woolf, Virginia, "AnUnwritten Novel,"cited, 116n

Wordless activities as anaid to writing, 131 —135

Words, number of,106-108,109

Writerscharacteristics, 38- 39,

147-148self-doubt, 42-43personality factors,

25-40 passimWriting difficulties, non-

technical. SeeDifficulties,nontechnical

Writing of Fiction, The(Wharton), quoted,92

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