WRITING AND REWRITINGChapter IWHY LEARN TO WRITE
The four main reasons for learning to write are:
1. Writing is one of the best ways to make other persons think or feel as you do.
2. Every educated person is judged frequently and severely by the correctness and skill displayed in his writing.
3. The more you learn about writing the more you will enjoy reading.
4. Good writing gives pleasure, not only to the reader but also to the writer.
1. The ability to write clearly and convincingly will be of great help to you after you leave college. Whatever your field of activity, your ultimate success will depend in some degree on your ability to make other persons think or feel as you do. Writing is one of the best ways to attain this end.
Many professional men and women find that success depends not only on their knowledge, but even more on the skill and clearness with which they can present their knowledge. Lawyers write briefs and arguments. Judges write opinions. Clergymen write sermons. Teachers, doctors, and engineers get their new ideasbefore members of their professions by writing papers for publications of various kinds. The results of their experiments and researches are almost invariably presented to their colleagues in writing.
To attain eminence in one of the learned professions it is necessary for a man’s colleagues to think highly of his professional knowledge and attainments. It is not always possible for the leaders in your profession to know you personally, but if you can write they soon know what manner of man you are. The scholarly articles that a young professional man gets printed correspond to the home runs that are knocked by a bush league baseball player, but there is this difference. The sand lot baseball player may have made his impressive looking records against sand lot pitching and may fail dismally when he faces better opposition, but if a young professional man has the mental ability and the skill to produce contributions to knowledge in his field it makes no difference where he lives or under what conditions he has done his work. As he moves up to his big league he finds conditions more and more favorable for his continued growth and development.
College graduates everywhere are being expected more and more to assume positions of leadership in all matters that pertain to community betterment. Sometimes they are candidates for office; more often they are directors of the chamber of commerce of their city, or of some similar civic enterprise. Written statements, annual reports, appeals for public support for a worthy cause, letters to newspapers, circulars, and bulletins are almost the only way a public spirited citizen can get his ideas before the other members of the community. If he can write clearly and convincingly he gets thingsdone that would not be done if he expressed himself haltingly and incoherently when he took pen in hand.
Up-to-date farmers and business men use printed and typewritten matter to get new business, to hold and increase old business, to adjust complaints, and to collect money. Every salesman has to write reports to his firm. Formal bids for all kinds of business are submitted in writing. Most busy executives prefer to receive the ideas of their subordinates in writing, and the subordinate who submits the largest number of good ideas in this way is the one who is likely to be promoted most rapidly. Many executives have to depend on letters and bulletins in directing large numbers of subordinates or in directing subordinates who cannot frequently be brought together. If you want to be paid for what you know rather than for what you do, learn to write.
Other things being anywhere nearly equal the man who can write gets ahead fastest in the business, political, or professional world. The man with a new idea—whether it is a new type of automobile engine or a plan for insuring hogs—can make a success of it far more quickly if he can write clearly and convincingly. The next time you see a copy ofWho’s Who in Americanote the list of publications that follows the name of the successful man. The ability to write has dollar and cents value whether or not you ever wish to sell any of your manuscripts. You must be able to write to get to the top.
2. Why do you suppose that almost every help wanted advertisement that offers a salary of more than $1200 or $1500 a year contains the phrase, “Apply by letter only”? The answer is that from one hundred letters it is easy to select the half dozen or so that comefrom persons qualified for a position rather than for a job. Applicants who write poor letters are never considered for good positions.
The activities of the social world continually call for letters—letters of invitation, of acceptance or declination, letters to a hostess thanking her for her hospitality, letters of congratulation and of condolence. Any new person to whom you write will judge what sort of man or woman you are from your first letter. Uneducated persons may have well furnished houses in the exclusive residential districts of the city, and they may wear thousand-dollar fur coats, but their written words betray the fact that they are not accustomed to associating with educated persons.
Students who can write get better grades in college courses than do students who cannot express themselves with pen, pencil, or typewriter. Written reports, term papers, and examinations all call for ability to write. It is essential not only to have the information that should be included in such compositions but also to be able to express your knowledge so that the instructor involved will know that you know.
3. The better you write the more you will enjoy reading. You can actually know personally only a few persons, and they will for the most part be your neighbors and business associates. A love for good reading is the best friend you can have. Reading will make you intimate with all the great men and women who are now alive or who have ever lived. These great ones of earth—the clever, the entertaining, the thoughtful, the lovable, the brilliant, the courageous—have set down in books a permanent record of what they observed, thought, and dreamed. To get the fullest flavor andgreatest benefit from the words they have put on paper you need to be something of a writer yourself. The writer best appreciates the good writing of others, just as the amateur musician gets more pleasure from a symphony concert than does the average person in the audience. The football player sees fine points in a football game that are lost on the spectator who never tried to box a tackle or elude an end. The girl who makes her own clothes can see distinctions in gowns that all look alike to her brother. It takes the craftsman in any field of endeavor to appreciate the work of a master.
4. Your mother has, at the bottom of a trunk or bureau drawer, a bundle of letters that your father wrote to her when they were young. Every little while she reads them all again. She also keeps the letters he writes her now when he is away from home. Your letters to your mother will not be destroyed either. The better you write, the more pleasure you will give to the persons you love. Letters of commendation, congratulation, or condolence when done well are treasured for years, and are a never failing source of pleasure to those who receive them. It is worth something to give pleasure of this sort.
But the greatest pleasure of all in writing is the pleasure that comes to you yourself. To get real enjoyment from writing you should write on a subject you know thoroughly or on one that interests you—preferably both. Write without reserve; call things by their right names. Use care in selecting the exact word to express your meaning. Write clearly, concisely, and vividly. Be definite and particular rather than indefinite and general. Use incidents freely to illustrate your points. Be forceful and picturesque. Write so thatanyone who knows you could pick your written creation out of a thousand written by others on the same subject.
Write something you are proud of and you will get more pleasure from it than from almost anything else you ever did. Even though you may not yet have realized it, writing is a great deal more fun than going to the theater, dancing, or watching a football game. The greatest thrill in life comes from seeing one whom you love create something. The next greatest comes from creating something yourself. Create something in writing that truly represents you and you too will experience this joy.