How to write

Journalists so clumsy that, in the graphic phrase of a short grass poet, “they seem to write with their feet,” sell manuscripts with clock-like regularity to first-class markets. The magazines, like the newspapers, employ “re-write men” to take crude manuscripts to pieces, rebuild them and give them a presentable polish. The matter of prime importance to most of our American editors is an article’s content in the way of vital facts and “human interest.” Upon the matter of style the typical editor appears to take Matthew Arnold’s words quite literally:

“People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.”

No embittered collector of rejection slips will believe me when I declare that the demand for worth-while articles always exceeds the supply in American magazine markets. None the less it is true, as every editor knows to his constant sorrow. The appetite of our hundreds of periodicals for real “stories” never has been satisfied. The menu has to be filled out with a regrettable proportion of bran.

A good style will enhance the manuscript’s value, but want of verbal skill rarely will prove a fatal blemish. Not so long as there are “re-write men” around the shop!

It is not a lack of artistry that administers the most numerous defeats to the novice freelancer. It is a lack of market judgment. When he has completed his manuscript he sits down and hopefully mails it out to the first market that strikes his fancy. He shoots into the dark, trusting to luck.

A huge army of disappointed scribblers have followed that haphazard plan of battle. They paper their walls with rejection slips, fill up a trunk with returned manuscripts and pose before their sympathetic friends as martyrs.

Many of these defeated writers have nose-sense for what is of national interest. They write well, and they take the necessary pains to make their manuscripts presentable in appearance. If they only knew enough to offer their contributions to suitable markets, they soon would be scoring successes.

 When you have completed a manuscript, forget the inspiration that went into its writing and give cold and sober second thought to this matter of marketing. Too many discouraged novices believe that the bromide of the rejection slip–”rejection implies no lack of merit”–is simply a piece of sarcasm. It is nothing of the sort. In tens of thousands of instances it is a solemn fact. Don’t sulk and berate the editors who return your manuscript, but carefully read the contribution again, trying to forget for the moment that it is one of your own precious “brain children.” Cold-bloodedly size it up as something to sell. Then you may perceive that you have been trying to market a crate of eggs at a shoe store. Eggs are none the less precious on that account. Try again-applying this time to a grocer. If he doesn’t buy, it will be because he already has all the eggs on hand that he needs. In that event, look up the addresses of some more grocers.

The same common sense principles apply in selling manuscripts to the magazines and newspapers as in marketing any other kind of produce. The top prices go to the fellow who delivers his goods fresh and in good order to buyers who stand in need of his particular sort of staple. Composing a manuscript may be art, but selling it is business.

Naturally, it requires practice to become expert in picking topics of wide enough appeal to interest the public which reads magazines of national circulation. Every beginner, except an inspired genius, is likely to be oppressed with a sense of hopelessness when he is making his first desperate attempts to “break in.” The writer can testify feelingly on this point from his own experience.

 Source:  If You Don’t Write Fiction, by Charles Phelps Cushing