The Art of Writing

(from The Art of Useful Writing by B. Pitkin N.Y.)

For many years it has been apparent to me that the urge to write cannot be injected into the human nervous system. If it isn’t there it never will be there. Many able people can think things through only first writing down everything they know or guess or doubt about. Other people must talk in order to reach conclusions. Very few of us are able to sit down in silence and reflect steadfastly for a long time. It is no accident that the ablest thinkers almost always write a good deal – and fairly well too though not brilliantly. Those who think well but not write well are almost always keen voluminous conversationalists.

Now the art of writing can be taught to many more people than can learn to write poems and sonnets. For it deals with facts and interests far commoner than the little arts. The urge to tell the world a truth is more widespread than the urge to lay bare one’s pain over having been deceived by Amanda Simpkins of Fleet Street. But let this not confuse the issue. If a person has no inner impulse to tell the world anything waste no time forcing him to do so. You may drill him in certain deceitful tricks. But always he will be a dog walking on his hind legs a thoroughly unnatural and unhappy animal.

“The ability to write may be acquired”.

Thus a dozen peddlers of correspondence courses and text-books on useful writing say. When moved to explain they sometimes tell you that you can become a good writer very simply. Just learn to be curious and inquisitive. Just learn to think clearly. Just learn to have a lively imagination. Just learn to sympathize with all sorts of people and to see their point of view.

Bear in mind that useful writing must be measured differently from creative writing such as poems and short stories and drama. For the useful writer must devote much time to research. He must find verify and interpret facts. But the creative writer for entertainment spins things out of his head. Useful writers take the world as they find it. They write about anything and everything. Some report dog fights some little girls’ dresses some political wrangles some the ups and downs of May corn some the ins and outs of algebra. The world pays them for the service. Well done good and faithful servants. What’s more all of them gain character and they improve their skills. They become good citizens by and large. Five or six out of a thousand self-centered writers succeed. Often it is because of a devoted wife or an enthusiastic editor. Such was O. Henry. I wish somebody could tell the whole truth about him. But those who could either have died or have lost relish for such tasks.

Poor O. Henry clung to the worst possible rule. “Rule I of story writing” said he solemnly “is to write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II. In writing forget the public”. By taking himself seriously this blighted half genius became the nightmare of editors. He seldom wrote a story fit to print. Sometimes his editors would rewrite his stories three or four times before they were fit to print. Had O. Henry been allowed to publish his works in the form he wrote them he would have been the laughing-stock of the world. He was a bad writer with some rare gifts. Poor O. Henry had no character – neither good nor bad. He forgot the public. He cared nothing for the Other Fellow. He used words only to please himself. He became an egocentric writer whose manuscripts were so poor that editors had to toil over them more than O. Henry would.

During the past twenty-five years I have helped more four thousand novelists journalists and other writers in their work. More than half of these I have had under virtually continuous observations for from one to three years. Thus I can say that some recommendations can be of help.

Writing helps thinking. Firstly set down any proposition on paper. Eye it. It leads you on to something else doesn’t it? And then on to something further along an unknown path. Secondly you are unsure of your ideas about a matter. All right. Start writing whatever comes to mind on the subject. Read your statements. Then write more. Read again and then write. Now throw all your notes away. Reflect a while. Then start writing afresh. Thirdly If yours is a normal mind you have been thinking all the while. Slowly you have been clearing up dark spots and disentangling mental smarts. Each word becomes a guide a tip a hit a clue. Set down enough words and you reach fresh and better conclusions. Then If I could I’d make you buy several thousand sheets to fit into loose-leaf notebook covers. I’d start you off writing at random on at least four or five unrelated topics picked out of the wanton air. I’d warn you to be untroubled by your lack of interest in most of the topics – yours only to plug along. Lastly I’d command you to comment on each topic after you had written about it. Your views would be attached to your articles slipped into a notebook and filed for several weeks or months. Then you’d haul them out read them again and change your comments in the light of your maturing judgment.

On the basis of my observations I can conclude that with very few exceptions the following tendencies emerge:

• The best writers (whom I define as the upper ten percent of the entire group) spontaneously produce from three to twenty times as much as the average writers (whom I take as the middle thirty per cent of the entire group) and from thirty to fifty times as much as the poor writers (the bottom ten per cent).

• The best writers think their problems over from start to finish much oftener than the average writers do. And the poor writers are almost all constitutionally unable to repeat the intellectual effort.

• The best writers keep extensive notes and most of them test out ideas for stories or articles or essays in fairly long rough form before deciding to use them.

• The best writers tend to change their first ideas extensively while they potter over them; and the poor writers almost invariably cling tenaciously to the original “inspiration”.

• The best writers have many ideas and hence hold them cheap while the poor writers have few ideas and hence cherish them. Odd as it sounds I have often heard a poor writer say: “But I won’t change this manuscript. It’s too hard to revise it. And I have no other subject that I’d like to work on”.

• The ideas and first sketches of the best writers show an enormous range of quality. There is more unmitigated rubbish in their notes than in the meager documents of the poor writers.

• The best writers can accept both criticism and new ideas from other people much more readily than can the poor writers. It is the rarest time in the world to find a first class writer resenting even harsh criticism either of his basic ideas or of his execution. Sensitivity is one of the surest symptoms of inferiority here.

• Average and poor writers who produce large amounts of writing finished or experimental usually do one of two things: either they unconsciously imitate something they have read and admired or else they grow verbose saying in a thousand words that might have been telescoped into a hundred properly chosen words.

• The best writers are almost wholly wrapped up in saying what they have to say. They are absorbed in sheer expression of ideas. The poor writers together with many average writers whose training has inclined them that way follow a different pattern. They dawdle over words lovingly. They spend an hour over a single sentence striving for exquisite rhythm for alliteration or for poetic figures. Having little or no pressure driving them to give form to a large idea they slow down. They become engrossed in the parts of the picture which they wish their words to depict. They can neither see nor manage the whole.

Section 4

Discussion and conversation