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If your trade is non-fiction, and you turn to fiction to improve your art rather than your bank account, good counsel will admonish you not to aim at any other mark than the best that you can produce in the way of literary art. For there lies the deepest satisfaction a writer can ever secure "art makes living worth his while." Keep studying. Keep experimenting. Set yourself harder tasks.
His nose is keen for "good stories," his eye equally alert to dodge the ax or to nab Opporchunity's fleeting coat-tails. If you have a real "story" up your sleeve and know how to word it in passable English, the next thing to learn is the way to prepare a manuscript in professional form for marketing. In the non-fiction writer's workshop only two machines are essential to efficiency and economy.
Much as we may regret to acknowledge it, there is no way to get around the fact that the larger and more general the circulation of a periodical, the more universal must be the appeal of the material printed and the fewer the mainstays of interest, until in a magazine with a circulation of more than a million copies the chief classifications of non-fiction material required can easily be counted upon the fingers.
The eye that can perceive the dramatic and put it into non-fiction, the heart that knows human interest, the understanding that can tell a symbol, the artist-instinct that can catch characteristic colors, scents and sounds, all should aid a skilled writer of articles to turn his energies, with some hope of achievement, toward producing fiction.
A nose for news, some perseverance, a typewriter and a camera have thus far been listed as the equipment most essential to success for a writer of non-fiction who sets out to trade in the periodical market as a free lance. Rather brief mention has been made of the matter of literary style. This is not because the writer of this book lacks reverence for literary craftsmanship.
I understand he constantly gets mail addressed to Lieutenant Emile Tannenbaum. MAURY: I may be accusing him falsely. But, you haven't told me what you've been doing. PARAMORE: For one thing writing. MAURY: Fiction? PARAMORE: No. Non-fiction. MAURY: What's that? A sort of literature that's half fiction and half fact? PARAMORE: Oh, I've confined myself to fact.
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