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If only as a tonic! If only to jog himself out of a rut of habit! If he succeeds with fiction he has bright hopes of winning much larger financial rewards for his labor than he is likely to gain by writing articles. Non-fiction rarely brings in more than one return upon the investment, but a good short story or novel may fetch several. First, his yarn sells to the magazine.
Having read but very little, their power of concentration was small, and the book that contained a story that "went all the way through" did not appeal to them. Their great regard for "teacher's" opinion helped us at the library to please them by giving them non-fiction.
A classic anecdote of New York's Fleet Street may illustrate the point: The publisher of a national weekly was hiring a newspaper man as editor. "Is this a writing job?" the applicant inquired. "No!" growled the publisher, "a thinkin' job!" The writer of non-fiction is in the same boat with the editor who buys his articles; he calls himself a writer, but primarily he is up against a thinking job.
A small bank account gave me assurance that there was no immediate peril of starving, and I wisely kept a connection with the local newspaper. In case disaster overtook me, I knew where I could find a job again. What happened to me in making a beginning as a free lance producer of non-fiction might happen to any one else of an equal amount of inexperience.
Examine any popular magazine which has a circulation of general readers, speaking to a forum of anywhere from a quarter of a million to ten million assorted readers, and you will find that the non-fiction material which it is most eager to buy may easily be classified into half a dozen types of articles, all concerned with the ruling passions of the average American, as: 1. His job. 2.
After he has bought or rented a typewriter, the would-be free lance in the non-fiction field has his workshop only half equipped. One more machine is an urgent necessity. Get a camera. Few of our modern American newspapers and magazines are published without pictures; so anybody ought to be able to perceive how absurd it is to submit an unillustrated manuscript to an illustrated periodical.
These questions with their answers may be considered in order: Question 1. If you make picture bulletins in your library, what is your object in so doing? To supplement school work, advertise the books, stimulate non-fiction reading and celebrate anniversaries are the four answers which the majority give.
To the beginner such facts as these seem to indicate that any one can win in journalism who has the proper kind of nose. This conclusion is only a half-truth, but it is good for the novice to learn and as soon as possible that the first requisite toward "landing" in the newspapers and magazines is to know a "story" when he sees one. In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction.
The children in vacation-time may change story-books every day if they like practically none of them do it but in school time they are allowed only one a week. This is not a hardship, for they may use their non-fiction cards, which give them anything else, including bound magazines.
They are what the trade calls "go-getters." They deliver the "story" as best they can, and a more skillful stylist completes the job. Success in marketing non-fiction to popular magazines appears to hinge largely upon the quality of the thinking the writer does before he sets pen to paper.
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