If You Don't Write Fiction

by Charles Phelps Cushing

No life into which the average modern can dip is so rich in interest for the first year or two as that of the reporter working upon general assignments. A fling at hobo life, ten voyages at sea and more than two years of army life (a year and a half of this time spent in trekking all over the shattered landscape of France) do not shake my conviction that the adventurer most to be envied in our times is the cub reporter enjoying the first thrills and glamors of breaking into print. There is a scent in the air, which, though it be only ink and paper, makes the cub's blood course faster the minute he steps into the office corridor; and as he mounts the stairs to the local room the throbbing of the presses makes him wonder if this is not literally the "heart of the city."

He makes his rounds of undertakers' shops, courtrooms, army and navy recruiting offices, railway stations, jails, markets, clubs, police and fire headquarters. He is sent to picnics and scenes of murders. He is one of the greenest of novices in literary adventure, but, quite like an H. G. Wells, he meets in his community "philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the great."

He is underpaid and overworked. He has no time to give his writings literary finish; and, in the end, unless he develops either into a specialist or an executive, he may wear himself out in hard service and be cast upon the scrap heap. At first, the life is rich and varied. Then, after a while, the reporter finds his interest growing jaded. The same kind of assignment card keeps cropping up for him, day after day. He perceives that he is in a rut. He tells himself: "I've written that same story half a dozen times before."

Then is the time for him to settle himself to do some serious thinking about his future. Does he have it in him to become an executive? Or does he discover a special taste, worth cultivating, for finance, or sport, or editorial writing? If so, he has something like a future in the newspaper office.

But if what he really longs to do is to contribute to the magazines or to write books, he is at the parting of the ways. He should seize now upon every opportunity to discover topics of wide interest, and in his spare time he should attempt to write articles on these topics and ship them off to market.

He has laid the first solid foundation of successful freelancing, for if he has been able to survive as long as six months in the competition of the local room he has a nose for what constitutes a "story."

The next thing he has to learn is that an article for a magazine differs chiefly from a newspaper story in that the magazine must make a wider appeal—to a national rather than to a local interest. The successful magazine writer is simply a reporter who knows what the general public likes to read, and who has learned when and where and how to market what he produces. Timeliness is as important as ever, so he must look to his tenses. The magazine article will not appear until from ten days to six months or more after it is accepted. Some of our magazines begin making up their Christmas numbers in July, so he must learn to sweat to the tinkle of sleigh bells.

I wonder how many hundreds of ambitious newspaper reporters are at this very minute urging themselves to extra effort after hours and on their precious holidays and Sundays to test their luck in the magazine markets? The number must be considerable if my experience as a member of the editorial staff of a big national magazine allows me to make a surmise. I have read through bushels of manuscripts that had the ear marks of the newspaper office all over them. They were typed on the cheap kind of "copy paper" that is used only in "city rooms." The first sheet rarely had a title, for the newspaper reporter's habit is to leave headline writing to a "copy reader." Ink and dust had filled in such letters as "a" and "e" and "o." Most of the manuscripts were done with characteristic newspaper office haste, and gave indication somewhere in the text that the author had not the faintest notion of how far in advance of the date line the magazine had to make up its table of contents.

Many of these novices showed a promise in skill that might give some uneasy moments to our most prosperous magazine headliners. If only there were firm jaws back of the promise! These men had the nose for journalistic success, but that alone will not carry them far unless it is backed with a fighting jaw.

I look back sometimes to cub days and name over the reporters who at that time showed the greatest ability. Three of the most brilliant are still drudging along in the old shop on general assignments, for little more money than they made ten years ago. One did a book of real merit and the effort he expended upon it overcame him with ennui. Another made the mistake of supposing that he could pin John Barleycorn's shoulders to the mat. Another had no initiative. He is dying in his tracks.