When a student commences the study of Art he does not begin with the painting of some big, involved subject, such as "A Scene from Hamlet." He spends some years working at little bits and making studies. He practises on a profile, or a hand, or the branches of a tree; he will sketch and re-sketch a child's head, or one figure; he will work away at a few rose-petals or an apple—always endeavouring to render small pieces of work well, rather than large pieces indifferently.
When a great artist starts work on an Academy picture, he does not commence at one side of the canvas and work right across to the other side till the picture is finished. He does not necessarily begin his masterpiece by painting on the canvas at all. As a rule, he makes a rough-out of his idea (more than one, very often), merely blocking in the figures, arranging and re-arranging the position of the main items, then assigning the details to their proper places, till he gets all properly balanced, and to his liking.
Then he dissects the picture-that-is-to-be, making separate studies of the figures, sometimes making several drawings of an arm, or a piece of drapery, or a bit of foreground, expending infinite care and work on fragments, and making dozens of sketches before a stroke is put on the canvas itself.
Thus you see both the novice and the master specialise on detail before they tackle a piece of work as a whole.
Some of the "studies" made by famous artists for their important pictures are positive gems, and help us to understand something of the immense amount of thought and preparation that go to the making of any work of art that is to live.
The student who is training for authorship must work on the same lines. All too often the amateur starts by putting down the first sentence of a story or an article, and then writes straight on to the very end, without any preliminary rough-out or separate study of detail; and the result is a shapeless mass of words, lacking balance and variety, and either without any climax, or with two or three too many.
"It simply Came!"
When offering a MS. for publication, the writer will often tell me—as though it were something to be proud of—"I merely sat down, and without any previous thought, wrote the whole of this story from beginning to end. It simply came."
One can only reply: "It reads like it!"
I have before me a letter and MS. from a would-be contributor, who writes: "I just dashed this off as it first came into my head. I do so love scribbling, and I simply can't help jotting things down when the fit takes me."