The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-02-13
! AN AUTHORS TRAINING.


 "A. N. Cummings, in Boston Kaleidoscope, Tnere IS a common but very erroneous opinion abroad that if a writer only has genius, he will be exempt all his life from that vulgar and disagreeable necessity known as hard work. As for every real genius sent into the world there are at least a million men and women who consider themselves geniuses; and as the million pseudo genluses and not the one real genius are the ones who avail them selves of the prerogative to be idle, the results are often disastrous. Real gen. fuses are always persons of immense ca pacity for work, and it is the very ease with which some of them do their work that misleads their throng of mediocre followers.
 The fallacy is at once apparent, if we illustrate the case by parallel in the physical world. A man of great physical endowments may do in single hour a vast amount of work. For the rest of the day he is seen idling around in society, his mind free from care and his whole appearance careless and indifferent. A man of only ordinary abilities tries to fol- low out the same programme with the result that he accomplishes the idling most successfully, but the work, somehow, seems to remain undone.
 But it is by no means true that men of genius, as a rule, wear even the sem blance of idleness. Most of them have gone through an amount of work calcu- lated to appal common worker. Such writers as Scott and George Eliot and Thackeray and Bulwer and rrollope and Dickens have lived lives of hard, system. atic toll. It is true that in the case of some geniuses of the more intensely imaginative stamp there has been an inn mense amount of day-dreaming. This reverie is essential to poet, but it is as far removed from lazy listlessness as the visions of a prophet are from the day. dreams of school-boy. If a writer does not possess genius, then it is evidently necessary to toll far more assiduously and unremittingly, if one would accom- plish even creditably large amount of work. Napoleon's one supreme test of a man was "What has he done2"
 l assert then without further argument that If you intend to be successful au. thor, you must make up your mind to a lifetime of the hardest, most conscien- tious work of which you are capable. You must realize ence for all that the way /" ad astra" lies "per aspera." Unless you enter upon your vocation with this conviction, you are likely to fail miser- ably and to bring disappointment upon yourself and your friends.
 The way to learn writing is to write, just as the way to learn swimming is to plunge right in and swim. You must practice patiently month after month and year after year before you can produce a mas ter-piece. This is no more than you would have to do in any calling worthy of your adoption, and no amount of na- tive ability can relieve you of the neces- sity of practice. Practice does wonders for ordinary people and still more for persons of talent or genius. You might have the mind of Shakespeare, but un- less you had had some experience, a re- porter on daily paper could do better literary work than you could. you had a very decided talent for music, you would still have to spend many, many dreary hours in the most tedious practic- ing before you could play tolerably we'll. If you are an embryo Raphael, you must, nevertheless, undergo great amount of preliminary drill before your pictures will com nand the attention of mankind.
 Fortunately for geni1ses, nature has implanted in their bosoms, a fierce, un. conquerable desire to work, each in his particular field; and this natural impulse sweetens what would otherwise be insup- portable drudgery. The artist grasps a burnt stick or piece of chalk as soon as his baby fingers can grasp anything, and begins to sketch on any surface that he can find. The musicians first impulse is to arrange harmonies and execute them on whatever instrument he can get pos session of. In like manner person who is born with genius for writing, usually takes to pen and ink as naturally as to air and sunshine. The novelist spends his in concocting wonderful tales and delighting his playmates with them the poet lisps in numbers, for the num- bers come"
 If, then, you have felt strong natural yearning to express your thoughts on pa- per since your earliest remembrances, there is reasonable presumption that heaven intended you to be a writer. This Is not always the case, as some great writers have not produced anything un- til we'll advanced in life. Under any cir the mere writing you can do, the better it will be for your success. Get the habit ot jotting down your ideas in terse, vigorous English and take pains to make each sentence as nearly perfect as possible, no matter how 1 ephemeral may be the work which vou are doing. It is just as easy to write cor. l rectly and elegantly as it is to write in | the slipshod, watery style that disgraces most of our daily papers, if you only give your attention to it and do not begrudge the time and pains which are necessary. Moreover, it is an excellent habit to note l happy turns of phrase and sensitive uses of words in your daily reading. It goes without saying that you must read con- stantly and widely and must make your-