APPENDIX
APPENDIX A
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDENT
It is surely obvious that the only way to learn how to write is—to write. The only way to learn how to do anything is to try until the secret is conquered, and the more difficult the feat or art the longer must be the apprenticeship.
Stepping from abstract study of technique to the actual writing of a story is a violent transition. The student has only a very general knowledge, and now he must give it narrowly specific application. He has read a brief discussion of the mechanics of the art of describing a person, for instance, has read Stevenson's description of Villon and his fellows; now he himself must write a description of Napoleon or Lizzie Smith or John Arthur McAllister; and he desires to write as well as Stevenson.
The only thing to do is to go at the task patiently and with courage. Put the best of you at the moment into each thing you undertake, but do not expect each single item of your work to show an appreciable advance, and do not be discouraged if each thing you do seems as poor or no better than what has gone before. Your first, second, tenth, or fifteenth story may be patent trash, in point of execution, but never mind. After a year or so of intelligent and directed writing the results of your study and application of technique will begin to appear. It is impossible that they should show themselves at once, for technical study will cramp and constrain you until you have gained some real facility in writing in accordance with the canons of art. That is true of all arts, of course. No tool can be used properly without practice.
Perhaps you may desire to submit your practice work to magazines and publishers as you go along, and if you mean to have a serious try at the game it is advisable that you do so. The fact that you are writing for submission will serve as a stimulus; you will receive helpful incidental criticisms from editors, if your work shows promise; and, above all, you will gradually acquire the necessary knowledge of the market, its needs, tendencies, and desires. However, I do not believe it advisable for one who is trying to learn to write to ape deliberately the tone of particular magazines, with an eye to possible sales. That is a trick of the trade—and permissible enough—but it is no way to learn to write fiction. The skilled hand can direct his efforts so, but the apprentice had better center his efforts upon finding some good story and upon writing it to the best he knows how.
A few specific bits of advice as to how to go about practicing the art of fiction may not be useless. Technique is conceptive, constructive, and executive, and the beginner should exercise his latent powers in each department.
The technique of conception is practiced unconsciously by anyone who seeks to find a story for writing, but exercise of the conceptive faculty should not be limited to the times when you desire actually to write. You should form a habit of thinking creatively, of mentally shaping into stories the material offered by observation, thought, and reading. If this is done, and notes kept of your promising ideas, you will have on hand constantly considerable amount of material, and you will not be forced to waste time in casting about for an idea when the spirit moves you to write. Moreover, I think most essentially feeble stories are stories conceived and thrown together on the spur of the moment as the writer sits and looks at a sheet of white paper, and if you have five, ten, or a hundred stories more or less completely blocked out in your files or in your mind, you can choose for writing one fitted to your mood and also worth the writing. It is almost impossible to judge the worth of an idea immediately after it is conceived; by separating the conceptive and executive processes you will be led to avoid much waste labor in developing what is essentially weak.