While allowance must be made for those deriving benefit from both, the 107 who found benefit from reading other authors contrast strongly with the 25 who stated either elementary or advanced benefit from classes, courses and books (all or any) on how to write.
It must be borne in mind that what some consider benefit would be considered a loss by others.
A rough checking up of the answers shows that, while some 90 authors or books were mentioned, no one of them was mentioned often:—Kipling 8; the Bible, Dickens and O. Henry, 4; Maupassant, Conrad, Jack London, 3; Milton, Emerson, Scott, Homer, Sophocles, Hall Caine, Balzac, Anatole France, the Russians, Poe, Gautier, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Richard Harding Davis, 2. Since no general expression as to particular books or authors was called for, these chance expressions are not indicative of anything except that no particular ones seem found sufficiently valuable to bring about much spontaneous mention. Among the manuscripts (the total submitted, not merely the accepted ones) coming in to my own particular magazine the writers whose influence seems most marked are Kipling, O. Henry, Conan Doyle, Jack London, Stevenson. The list would vary at other editorial desks, but at most of them these five would probably be included.
Only 7 of our answers warn against the dangers of imitation. The warning is badly needed, particularly by beginners. The essence of style is expression of self, not of some one else, yet the manuscript world is tragically full of writers who are straining every nerve—and killing or drugging the individuality that alone can get them to any place really worth reaching—in a silly effort to write like some one else. They can't, for the simple reason that they can't be this some one else. And meanwhile, instead of expressing themselves, they are burying themselves.
Possibly O. Henry, Kipling and Doyle produce the greatest numbers of imitators, but current fiction provides many ephemeral models that produce noticeable waves of imitation.
Even with successful writers, who can say where the benefit from studying other authors ends and harm begins? Of what value is technique if gaining it has suppressed any of the individuality whose expression is technique's only warrant for existence?
Few indeed are the writers who can not profit from a study of good models, yet few are they who can unerringly reap the undoubted benefit without paying for it in some loss of individuality. Perhaps those most safe against the danger are those least in need of the benefit. There can be no question of the benefit to be derived, but to every beginner—and to most writers on the highway of success—there is need to shout a warning against letting the models absorb him instead of his absorbing the models.
QUESTION VII
What is your general feeling on the value of technique?