Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 52

I have now shown how the third of my three maxims for the guidance of the freelance is to be carried into practice. I will go back to the other two. In choosing subjects to write about, the freelance must always bear in mind my first maxim. He may leave to great editors the task of educating the public; his own business is to minister to their desires. He must not be ashamed to be popular, and he must not be ashamed to write the kind of stuff that he would not dream of reading were it written by some one else. His first efforts cannot be too humble. The point is that he wants to get into print, and he will the most quickly and easily achieve his desire by appealing to a large audience. He must put away all sentimentality about the art of literature and the moral mission of journalism. It is of no use beginning to air one’s views until one has collected an audience. A young man of talent, capable of distinguished work, may hammer at the doors of the Spectator and the Fortnightly Review for years with dissertations upon literature, morals, or world-politics; ultimately, when he has attained sufficient skill and shown sufficient pertinacity, he will be admitted within these august portals. I say that it would have been better for him, not only financially but in experience and in other ways, had he been content to make a start by amusing or instructing the populace. I would repeat and repeat again: Begin humbly.

It is well to begin with the paragraph. The piquant paragraph of two or three hundred words is enormously in demand. There is scarcely any paper with a general circulation that does not gladly buy paragraphs—paragraphs about anything and everything. Paragraphs are not a gold-mine, and only a freelance of miraculous ingenuity could make a living out of them; but they require much less constructive skill than even the shortest article, and just as completely as an article they afford the aspirant the satisfaction of seeing himself in print, and of pluming himself upon having established relations with a paper. The remuneration for paragraphs runs from half-a-crown to three and sixpence. Some papers pay by the inch, and some have a fixed price per paragraph irrespective of length.

My second maxim should help the aspirant in excogitating topics for his brilliant and facile pen. He must learn to see life interestingly. And he must fall into the habit of regarding the whole of human existence as material for “copy.” The idea of “copy” must be always with him. When he jumps on an omnibus, ideas for articles should crowd thick upon him: “How an Omnibus is Built,” for Pearson's Magazine; "The Ailments of Omnibus Horses: a Chat with a Vet. of the London General,” for the Westminster Gazette; “An Omnibus Horse’s views about Policemen,” for a comic paper; “Ways of the Omnibus Thief,” for Tit-Bits; "London Stables: an Inquiry,” for the Daily News; “Stopping and Starting,” a sketch, for the Queen or the Saturday women’s page of the Daily Chronicle. When he spends a sleepless night owing to the entire failure of all his efforts for a month past, he should by instinct consider the feasibility of a scare-article for the Daily Mail about the increasing use of narcotics by urban populations. When his uncle is killed in a great railway accident, he should be moved to write an illustrated article on the differences between ancient and modern railway accidents for the Strand Magazine. And when he is starving because he has been foolish enough to throw up a safe but modest clerkship before securing a position in Fleet Street, he should throw off a bright essay for the Young Man on “How to Live on a Shilling a Day.” If he animates his existence by this spirit he is certain to succeed.