Pick your field and then specialize in that field. Learn all you can about it—you never can know too much. If you can, develop a new field; then you'll be its master, not merely a follower of the trails laid down by others. The beaten paths are always crowded with other folks who are trying to do the same thing you're doing. If you can't be a pioneer, then try to make yourself the best man in whatever line you've chosen—the sea, the mountains, the jungle, the city, the small town, or what-not. "Knowledge is power" is an ancient bromide, but absolutely true.
J. U. Giesy: Complete interest in work, dogged perseverance, a study of language and its shades of meaning—a study of dialogue with a view to both virility and naturalness—a painting of descriptions broadly and concisely rather than in detail (for a beginner). I'd hesitate to advise a practised writer till I got into his class myself.
George Gilbert: Write; peddle your stuff through the mails. Keep away from editors; you can't influence them; do not let them influence you. Especially keep away from the editor who wants you to "write something like the last," or "string that idea into a series or a serial." Be yourself and let all else not matter. Do not write to order or to please any editor or set of readers.
Kenneth Gilbert: To the beginner I would say: Be sure your plot is strong, dramatic and not commonplace; start the action quickly, never let up on the suspense, and end it with a twist. (The so-called "surprise" story, but the safest with which to make the first landing.)
Modesty forbids me to suggest anything to the practised writer. —— writers require no such advice from me, and I wouldn't care to set down on paper any suggestions to the ladies and gentlemen who over-write many of our other magazines.
Holworthy Hall: Study Latin, forget O. Henry and manage to have a rich relative or an independent income in order to avoid the necessity of gambling with good ideas and turning them into bad stories for immediate cash.
To a practised writer without identity, I should hardly venture to offer suggestions.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I would say to a beginner that after eight years in this game I was forced to hold up a Spanish miner for food; and yet for seven years after that I have made a living at least and paid up debts. If the beginner is like me, he will need patience. If not this year, next, and if not then, perhaps five years hence. Respice finem.
I think I would also advise him not to set out to be an author, but if he has an itch to write, let him remember that and do it on the side, but let him also have another trade or profession and plug at that for his actual contacts. A spectator pure and simple will give a pretty thin interpretation of things, usually. A lawyer grows better as a lawyer by the mere exercise of his profession, and so a doctor; but an author by sitting at a desk can improve nothing but his technique—that thing at which I look aslant. He must go elsewhere for his matter. He must charge himself if he is to discharge. And this is not done too easily by strolling among his fellow-citizens and pestering them with questions. Unless you have some ground-knowledge, you can not even put the right questions.
Let him do something. Let him look to his personality, in other words. In my opinion it will not tower much over what it is when he leaves everything for writing.