The Joy of Hacks

Teach yourself how to write

At Yale

There was at one time a writing class taught at Yale University in New Haven. This class was well-known among the underclassmen at Yale, and was made famous to many of us who never took a class at Yale by an article written by a famous author and journalist who did (and whose name escapes me). In this article the author told how the class worked to teach writing.

This is the way the class worked (and this is the part that impressed me — but there must have been a bit more to it than that). Each and every morning, seven days a week, the students had an assignment to write an essay. The typewritten finished essays were to be deposited in a box outside the professor’s door. Each morning at 9 o’clock the professor would open this box and take the essays in to read and evaluate. This was a harrowing ordeal, the famous author wrote, years after the fact; to come up with a topic and then write something coherent about it, each and every day. The students hated the class, but the author gave it the main credit in making an author of him.

He learned, he wrote, how to write fast and well under deadline. The first weeks of the class were the hardest. After that he learned enough to go forward, and by the end of the class he had all he needed for a career in journalism or any other sort of writing.

The simple process of taking an idea, putting thoughts down on paper, and presenting it to a critic (‘publishing’ it, if you like), over and over again, taught him three things:

1. How to write fast
2. How to write under pressure
3. How to write ‘well enough’
4. That the blank page is nothing to fear

Of course there was more to the class than this, and the author learned more than these three things. For the professor must have offered feedback and criticism on his students’ essays, and probably some instruction in the classroom as well. And as for the student who became the famous author, he must have learned things about writing from the mere cycle of composition and revision.

The Man Who Wrote The Shadow

Many talesmen learned these lessons as journalists and carried them over to their fictional tales. Ben Hecht, Ian Fleming, Dame Cartwright, all began as journalists.

Another such talesman was Walter B. Gibson, who added to his career as journalist to become the main author of the novels appearing in the pulp magazine The Shadow.

William V. Rauscher on his tribute to Gibson at http://www.mysticlightpress.com/index.php?page_id=131 wrote about Gibson’s incredible output:

“In 1931 Walter switched from syndicate writing to mystery fiction. He accepted a year’s contract to deliver four stories involving a character to be called “The Shadow.” These were 75,000 word pulps. When the first two sold out, the publication was then published monthly. In March 1932 Walter was given a contract to deliver 1,440,000 words, which meant 24 stories at 60,000 words each, during the coming year. Then the magazine could be published twice a month. This was the largest output ever demanded in a single year that involved stories featuring a single mystery character. Walter completed the assignment in 10 months, and he did four more stories in the next two months, for a total that year of 1,680,000 words!”

…

“In later years a headline summarized his Shadow story output by saying, “A Million Words A Year for Ten Straight Years.” If the writing of these novels under Walter’s pen name of Maxwell Grant is included, the actual average was much higher.”

These and other notable ‘hacks’ may not have produced immortal literature, but they knew how to set down good, solid, workmanlike tales that remain eminently readable and have pleased millions of readers.

DIY

How can we use these lessons to advance our own careers as talesmen? I think it must come from repeating the cycle:

1. Write something
2. Revise as needed
3. Submit for publication
4. Repeat regularly

The key is to finish a tale and put it ‘out there’ for consideration, and then move on to the next. And to do so regularly, that is, on a schedule, under a deadline. A short story a week, say, or a novel every two months. (There are very few Walter Gibsons in the world!)

And yet what we write must meet some standard. For the students in the class at Yale, their essays faced the critical eye of the feared professor. For journalists, their articles must pass the editor’s desk. Tales submitted for publication must pass muster with the publications’ editors.

We might blog an essay a day, as I do here at asotirica. Or we might post a chapter of a novel online each day. But then where is the standard we must meet? Can we depend upon ourselves to judge, when we have a good reason (laziness, or lack of time) to stamp each piece ‘good enough’ whether it is or not? I confess that I have rushed many of these pieces, and let them go out less polished that I would have liked. Had I been submitting them to an editor’s eye, I would have made time to look those pieces over once again and make them better.

I don’t have an answer for this one as yet. One possible solution would be to submit to the readers, if there are any. You could add some sort of rating code to each piece, so any reader could score the piece high or low; then you could look back at those pieces that got low scores, and learn why, and maybe even rewrite them and put them up again to see if you can improve their scores.

(Composed on keyboard Thursday, March 13, 2008)