If You Don't Write Fiction

CHAPTER	PAGE
	Preface	[v]
I.	About Noses and Jaws	[1]
II.	How to Prepare a Manuscript	[10]
III.	How to Take Photographs	[16]
IV.	Finding a Market	[25]
V.	A Beginner's First Adventures	[32]
VI.	In New York's "Fleet Street"	[43]
VII.	Something to Sell	[54]
VIII.	What the Editor Wants	[61]
IX.	And if You Do--	[72]
X.	Forever at the Crossroads	[79]

CHAPTER I

ABOUT NOSES AND JAWS

A foxhound scents the trail of his game and tracks it straight to a killing. A lapdog lacks this capability. In the same way, there are breeds of would-be writers who never can acquire a "nose for news," and others who, from the first day that they set foot in editorial rooms, are hot on the trail that leads to billboard headlines on the front page of a newspaper or acceptances from the big magazines.

Many writers who are hopelessly clumsy with words draw fat pay checks because they have a faculty for smelling out interesting facts. In the larger cities there are reporters with keen noses for news who never write a line from one year's end to another, but do all of their work by word of mouth over the telephone.