Hugh Pendexter: No.
Clay Perry: At the age of fifteen years I subscribed to a combination course in journalism and short-story writing. It was absurd. In college I took a course in "The Study of the Novel" which helped steer my course toward a liking for good fiction ... perhaps. I have never read anything on fiction writing which helped me, that I know of, either in the elementary stages or beyond them. One friend who writes helped me more by a few suggestions and criticisms than anything I have ever read on the subject of writing.
Michael J. Phillips: No.
Walter B. Pitkin: I never studied writing under any teacher. I dodged all writing courses in college because they bored me to death and seemed to be engaged in unutterable piffle. I never read any text-books on rhetoric or style or story writing until I had been a professional journalist and writer for nearly ten years!
E. S. Pladwell: I have never studied anything in books or classrooms about fiction. I have glanced over one or two books on writing, but have not found them simplified enough. They start off with their arguments and then ramble away into the realms of theories, technique and other things which tend to becloud the mind away from the few broad general rules.
Lucia Mead Priest: I have had a not very thorough classroom training, with whatever books were prescribed—Hill, Wendell, etc., etc.
I found them necessary, mildly stimulating. They brought me to the realization that literature was work of a profound character.
Everything has helped. I have not gone beyond the elementary stage. It is a big, big craft, a long, long trail.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: None.
Frank C. Robertson: I have had no classroom nor correspondence course and have read not to exceed a half dozen text-books on the subject, though I have long been a subscriber to the Editor magazine and more recently to the Writer's Monthly. Such reading as I have done has helped, yet I am rather glad that I did not read enough at the start to become rule-bound. Now I think I have literary poise enough that I can discard what is inapplicable to my own needs, and so I am constantly adding to my collection of books on the art of writing. Also, within the last two months, I have formed the habit of sending my stories to a capable critic before offering them to magazines. I wish now that I had adopted this method long ago. The resulting self-analysis of my own work has been of more value to me than any other one factor.