sent conditions in the public taste and to
coax and take advantage of them. But it may be carried to extremes. I do
not think that many deliberately write trash, but it is apparent that a
good deal of trash is written through too sedulous imitation of the
tone of current literature. There is a recognizable type of machine-made
story used by all the all-fiction magazines, and so forth. Subject to
correction, I believe that the greater part of this cut-and-dried
product is owing less to editorial conservatism than to authorial
diffidence toward truly original work. Work may be original in
substance, method, and viewpoint without being obscene or even "frank."
When they do leave trodden ways, too many young writers persist in
opposing the justifiable editorial reluctance to print anything that
might give offense in a magazine of general circulation. The sex
relation is not the whole of life, and even the sex relation may be
treated, without the conventional sugar coating, to give all essential
facts and make all essential comments and not be forbidding. We have a
great world spread before us, and there is more in it for telling than
is already printed and on the newsstands. When looking for a story, the
thing to do is to forget those that have been written, to forget
everything except the spectacle of life.

In the choice of matter the two main considerations are novelty and
worth. Freshness in substance or form will go far to stimulate the
writer and to sell the result of his labor, and essential worth is
inspiring. No man finds pleasure in trivial and useless labor, but all
normal men find pleasure and exhilaration in labor that is worth while.
The writer who has worthy matter beneath his hands, and who knows it,
will remain keyed to the requisite pitch during the labor of
composition. Numbers have testified that the truest joy of authorship is
found in conceiving and elaborating a tale before setting pen to paper,
and time spent in estimating an idea and exhausting its possibilities
and deficiencies before writing is necessary to make certain that the
idea is worth while. Moreover, it is necessary that the writer know
precisely what his idea is in order to develop it properly by excising
the superfluous and emphasizing the significant. Conscious artistry is
impossible unless the author knows definitely what he is striving to
express.

The writer of fiction should bear in mind the three elements of the
story that is li