Harris Dickson: As a very young boy I started to write poetry. And did you ever think how much this may help? How it leads one to cast about for the exact word, for a word that balances with the sentence both in thought and rhythm? Well, it does. After that I wrote a few rotten short stories, one of which brought me five dollars. Then several historical novels, because I had read so much of our southwestern colonial history until I came to know the people. And I also knew the country. Out of this grew several pioneering sword and cloak novels of Louisiana and Mississippi.
My first magazine work was a special article which dealt with my criminal experiences in the city court. Then I began to write short stories of southern life, largely of negro life.
Captain Dingle: Neither course nor books. Lacking the educational furniture of a writer, it has always seemed to me that the sort of stuff I turn out must come bluntly from me, and that no amount of study will help, except the study of MEN.
Louis Dodge: Alas, I have had no classroom or correspondence aids. There's a knot to unravel. Things can be taught, certainly; but shall we learn to do a thing as others would do it? Did Columbus? Gallileo? Buddha? Shakespeare? Lincoln? Marconi? I suspect rules are like clothes: you ought to get good ones and then forget all about them.
Phyllis Duganne: No courses or books in writing. But I've had advice from older authors, which is immensely valuable. If teachers of writing fiction were authors themselves, I think they would be very helpful.
J. Allan Dunn: I have had no classroom or correspondence course nor have I read entirely any book on writing fiction. I have received considerable help in the beginning from advice given by an editor. Certain of his suggestions are strong with me to-day, such as his simile for making a true rope of the story and tucking in all the ends.
I was greatly indebted also in the beginning to an agent of mine—since retired—Helen Gardenhire, who taught me to keep my characters moving when they were on the stage, to take them off when they were not needed and not to let my hero stray up back-stage too often. In other words, continued and precise action.
For myself I conceive my story as a play. I try not to destroy the illusion or halt the action, not to take my audience round back of the scenes and never to let down the curtain and come out in front to make talk. I don't say I live up to this. I try to. But my first two yarns were accepted, I am sure, with all their faults of technique because they had been done over and over and over—because I had no real technique those days.
It is hard to apply, to set down, this psychology of the art of writing. Jack London used to say "you've got to learn the tricks, old man, then it will go easily." I try to regard a rejected story as I would any article of merchandize refused by customers—and find out what is the matter with it. I do not believe in correspondence schools for writers. The greatest advance lies in keeping at it and trying to find out what's wrong.
Walter A. Dyer: I never had any sort of instruction in fiction writing.