A. Judson Hanna: I can not say that reading the classics has helped me to write a story which will sell to an American magazine. I have received much valuable help by reading current authors. For instance, a story appearing in —— has passed the test. By studying it I get an idea of what makes a short story. However, the most help I have ever received I gained from criticisms, by magazine editors, of rejected stories.
Joseph Mills Hanson: It seems to me difficult to estimate how much of one's craftmanship in writing has been gained from reading the work of others and how much from his own impelling instincts and impulses. If he feels the necessity of expressing himself in writing, his natural abilities and limitations in narration probably govern his craftsmanship in greater degree than any reading. I believe, however, that my own style has been influenced at different times by different writers who aroused my admiration, both current authors and classic ones. Such influence I think is detrimental to one's individual style and should be guarded against. Even a poor individual style is better than a poor imitation of another's style. But the general effect of reading good authors can not but be elevating and improving to one's own imagination and narrative ability.
E. E. Harriman: Have developed more disgust than delight in reading current authors, because I find so much that is rotten-incorrect-ridiculous and out of reason in them. For instance —— —— telling us that when on skiis, crossing snow five feet deep, he found a bird sitting on its eggs in a nest. And —— —— giving a grizzly bear a round track.
The classics help me most. For clearness in composition—Shakespeare and the Bible. Drummond's poems aid me. Being foolish enough to do some versifying myself helps me in prose writing.
Nevil G. Henshaw: I've got a lot from both, possibly more from current authors.
Joseph Hergesheimer: All my early and important reading was in the English lyrical poets.
Robert Hichens: I have learned, I think, a great deal by reading certain authors, but not current authors. A book that has helped me is Tolstoy's Author's Art.
R. de S. Horn: After the beginner has got the fundamentals of writing straight in his mind the greatest assistance he can get anywhere is from reading current authors and the classics. The classics show him the art at its highest form: the models of technique. The current authors show him the popular style and the trend of the times. Neither one should be studied to the exclusion of the other. A fifty-fifty ration is best, I think.
Clyde B. Hough: "How much of your craft have you learned from reading current authors?" Absolutely all that I know. "From the classics?" None. I don't strive to write classics, so why study them? The classics of today, most of them, were not considered classics when they were written. And the good human stories of to-day will be the classics of to-morrow.
Emerson Hough: I hope I never imitated any current author. Could not any classic.