Now see, I am going to write of a New York editor:
John Jones, editor of one of the big, down-town magazines, finished his breakfast while his charming little wife, Mary, packed his lunch-bucket. Then he arose from the table and, with a brief kiss upon her ruby lips, he ran down the steps and out across the bottle-strewn lawn and down along the maple lined street. Mary stood in the door and waved as he turned the last corner....
John whistled gaily as he strode into the editorial office, punched the time-clock and set his lunch-bucket in the cloak room. He removed his coat and put on the long, black cloth cuffs that Mary had made; he climbed briskly to his stool and, as the whistle blew, turned to the papers that littered his desk and began to write rapidly....
Now, then. That's as near right as most of the cowboy stories that appear in any magazine except ——. You hate to read of that lunch-bucket as much as I do to read of wearing the chaps into the Denver hotel, or using a hair-rope for a riata! And all the rest.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: To a beginner, see VII and XI.
To a practised writer: Repent, brother!
Rose Macaulay: Do not begin. Very few beginners will come to any good. To practised writers: Stop. Very few practised writers have not already written too much.
Crittenden Marriott: Choose one type of story and stick to it. Otherwise you'll lose on all styles. Facility is a curse. If you want to write in several styles, have a nom de plume for each.
Homer I. McEldowney: (See also under answer to V.) One suggestion—the all-fired importance of taking the old pen in hand often and as regularly as may be, and of batting out lines, scads of them. And let it be the writer himself that flows with the ink, not Zane Grey, Thackeray or O. Henry.
Ray McGillivray: To a beginning writer: Read much of the best of the sort of writing you wish to do. Suit your own abilities and interests in the choice—and your abilities depend upon what you have seen, felt, lived and learned. Study every person as a human character. Live as full a life as your typewriter will let you. Write like a demon—and don't let up until your yarn satisfies you and at least one editor.