The Young Contributor | Page 9

may know by a rule that is pretty infallible whether it is
good or not, from his own experience in doing it. Did it give him
pleasure? Did he love it as it grew under his hand? Was he glad and
willing with it? Or did he force himself to it, and did it hang heavy
upon him?
There is nothing mystical in all this; it is a matter of plain, every-day
experience, and I think nearly every artist will say the same thing about
it, if he examines himself faithfully.

If the young contributor finds that he has no delight in the thing he has
attempted, he may very well give it up, for no one else will delight in it.
But he need not give it up at once; perhaps his mood is bad; let him
wait for a better, and try it again. He may not have learned how to do it
well, and therefore he cannot love it, but perhaps he can learn to do it
well.
The wonder and glory of art is that it is without formulas. Or, rather,
each new piece of work requires the invention of new formulas, which
will not serve again for another. You must apprentice yourself afresh at
every fresh undertaking, and our mastery is always a victory over
certain unexpected difficulties, and not a dominion of difficulties
overcome before.
I believe, in other words, that mastery is merely the strength that comes
of overcoming and is never a sovereign power that smooths the path of
all obstacles. The combinations in art are infinite, and almost never the
same; you must make your key and fit it to each, and the key that
unlocks one combination will not unlock another.

VI.
There is no royal road to excellence in literature, but the young
contributor need not be dismayed at that. Royal roads are the ways that
kings travel, and kings are mostly dull fellows, and rarely have a good
time. They do not go along singing; the spring that trickles into the
mossy log is not for them, nor
"The wildwood flower that simply blows."
But the traveller on the country road may stop for each of these; and it
is not a bad condition of his progress that he must move so slowly that
he can learn every detail of the landscape, both earth and sky, by heart.
The trouble with success is that it is apt to leave life behind, or apart.
The successful writer especially is in danger of becoming isolated from
the realities that nurtured in him the strength to win success. When he

becomes famous, he becomes precious to criticism, to society, to all the
things that do not exist from themselves, or have not the root of the
matter in them.
Therefore, I think that a young writer's upward course should be slow
and beset with many obstacles, even hardships. Not that I believe in
hardships as having inherent virtues; I think it is stupid to regard them
in that way; but they oftener bring out the virtues inherent in the
sufferer from them than what I may call the 'softships'; and at least they
stop him, and give him time to think.
This is the great matter, for if we prosper forward rapidly, we have no
time for anything but prospering forward rapidly. We have no time for
art, even the art by which we prosper.
I would have the young contributor above all things realize that success
is not his concern. Good work, true work, beautiful work is his affair,
and nothing else. If he does this, success will take care of itself.
He has no business to think of the thing that will take. It is the editor's
business to think of that, and it is the contributor's business to think of
the thing that he can do with pleasure, the high pleasure that comes
from the sense of worth in the thing done. Let him do the best he can,
and trust the editor to decide whether it will take.
It will take far oftener than anything he attempts perfunctorily; and
even if the editor thinks it will not take, and feels obliged to return it for
that reason, he will return it with a real regret, with the honor and
affection which we cannot help feeling for any one who has done a
piece of good work, and with the will and the hope to get something
from him that will take the next time, or the next, or the next.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
An artistic atmosphere does not create artists Any sort of work that is
slighted becomes drudgery Put aside all anxiety about style Should sin
a little more on the side of candid severity Trouble