Short Story Writing and Free Lance Journalism

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SHORT STORY WRITING AND FREE-LANCE JOURNALISM To ne Subs SHORT STORY WRITING AND , FREE-LANCE JOURNALISM BY SYDNEY A. MOSELEY AUTHOB OF The Truth About a Journalist Television To-day and To-morrow Whos Who in Broadcasting, Money Making in Stocks and Shares, The Truth About Borstal, A Singular People, With Kitchener in Cairo, Brightest Spots in Brighter London, FOURTH EDITION LONDON SIR ISAAC PITMAN SONS, LTD. 1946 PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION THAT SHORT STORY WRITING AND FREE-LANCE JOURNALISM has been selling steadily for some thirteen years is, I venture to submit, sufficient x testimony to its usefulness and popularity. What has happened in the intervening years from 1926 to 1939 new periodicals, new subjects, new editors and new ideas. And, of course, a multitude of new writers and new stars. I have revised this edition of SHORT STORY WRITING AND FREE-LANCE JOURNALISM, thoroughly bringing it up to date. Thus I hope the new reader will find it equally as useful as the many thousands who have made the three earlier editions possible. SYDNEY A. MOSELEY. ROYAL AUTOMOBILE CLUB, LONDON, S. W. I. 1939. INTRODUCTION CAN JOURNALISM BE TAUGHT THERE are few questions on which journalists are more divided domestically than that of the teaching of journalism. You will be told by some that no theoretical train ing in the world will make a journalist of anybody who lacks a special aptitude for the work. It is further claimed that the journalistic sense, like the musical sense, cannot be acquired, and must have been created within you. On the other hand, there are many experienced writers who hold that, given average intelligence and education to start with, journalism is a profession, like any other, which may be studied and taught. One could go on theorizing from both sides of the question. Far better to give the results of my own actual experience in putting the problems to the test. Some time ago I was approached by two colleagues who asked me to become the principal of a school for teaching article and fiction writing. I demurred. There are many schools of journalism, I pointed out, and in some of them at least the value of their tuition is open to question. All the more reason, was the argument, why an established journalist should be the head of a really sound school. I promised I would consult my editor Mends in Fleet Street. Much to my surprise I was encouraged vii viii INTRODUCTION on all hands to proceed with the project, and my friends were, in fact, of great personal help to me They told me that they were weary of receiving piles of manuscripts, many of which were hopelessly unsuitable at sight. They reminded me for my own editorial experience had been exactly the same as theirs of all the time tragically wasted in editorial offices, merely in order to sift promising literary wheat from quantities of utterly useless chaff. If, they argued, you can instil some elemen tary idea of editorial requirements into the minds of these unfortunate literary aspirants, the number of pathetically useless and time-wasting manuscripts will undoubtedly be reduced. At the very least, you can teach them not to send us totally unsuit able subjects. Good ideas, badly handled, and well written articles that do not in the least fit in with our own particular requirements. Editors, therefore, were only too glad for me to take in hand some of these aspiring writers. They knew of my own years of work in Fleet Street, and were kind enough to say they thought I could be of real help to my students. Well, I tried. It must have been a happy period in the editorial offices, for I certainly succeeded in shunting miles of manuscript from their offices to mine. I was soon overwhelmed with all sorts and conditions of articles and short stories the bulk quite unsuitable for publication. There were stories written on foolscap paper, others on odd sheets much work was quite undecipherable, and would not even be glanced through by the busy editor...