The stock advice of successful authors is, Practise. But unluckily I have practised, and it does not seem, to do any good. “I write one hundred long letters (or rather dictate them to my stenographer) every day,” says the business man. “My newspaper reports would fill a hundred splendid folios,” says the newspaper man, “and yet—and yet—I can't seem to hit it when I write a novel.” No, practice without guidance will not do very much, especially if we happen to be of the huge class of the uninspired. Our lack of genius, however, does not seem to be a reason why we should continue utterly ignorant of the art of making ourselves felt as well as heard when we use words. Here again use of language differs somewhat from painting or music, for unless we had some talent there would be no reason for attempting those arts.
Let us attack our problem from a common-sense point of view. How have greater writers learned to write? How do plumbers learn plumbing?
The process by which plumbers learn is simple. They watch the master-plumber, and then try to do likewise, and they keep at this for two or three years. At the end they are themselves master-plumbers, or at least masters of plumbing.
The method by which great writers, especially great writers who didn't start with a peculiar genius, have learned to write is much the same. Take Stevenson, for instance: he says he “played the sedulous ape.” He studied the masterpieces of literature, and tried to imitate them. He kept at this for several years. At the end he was a master himself. We have reason to believe that the same was true of Thackeray, of Dumas, of Cooper, of Balzac, of Lowell. All these men owe their skill very largely to practice in imitation of other great writers, and often of writers not as great as they themselves. Moreover, no one will accuse any of these writers of not being original in the highest degree. To imitate a dozen or fifty great writers never makes imitators; the imitator, so called, is the person who imitates one. To imitate even two destroys all the bad effects of imitation.
Franklin, himself a great writer, well describes the method in his autobiography:
How Franklin Learned to Write.
“A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me, of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of the opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute's sake. He was naturally more eloquent, having a ready plenty of words, and sometimes, as I thought, I was vanquished more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied. Three or four letters on a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the subject in dispute, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I owed to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method, and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor an improvement.
“About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished it possible to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiments in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them. But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses, since the continued search for words of the same import, but of different length to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.
“I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order before I began to form the full sentences and complete the subject. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of the thoughts. By comparing my work with the original, I discovered my faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying, that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been fortunate enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think that I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer; of which I was extremely ambitious. My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work, or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still continued to consider a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.”
A Practical Method.