Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    How to Become an Author: A Practical Guide - With an Essay from Arnold Bennett By F. J. Harvey Darton
    How to Become an Author: A Practical Guide - With an Essay from Arnold Bennett By F. J. Harvey Darton
    How to Become an Author: A Practical Guide - With an Essay from Arnold Bennett By F. J. Harvey Darton
    Ebook144 pages1 hour

    How to Become an Author: A Practical Guide - With an Essay from Arnold Bennett By F. J. Harvey Darton

    By Arnold Bennett

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    First published in 1903, this is a fantastic guide to becoming an author, looking at every aspect from writing novels and plays, to making money and beyond. Written by an author who gained international acclaim during their lifetime, this simple guide will be of considerable utility to anyone with an interest in writing for pleasure of for profit. Contents include: “The Literary Career”, “The Formation of Style”, “Journalism”, “Short Stories”, “Sensational and Other Serials”, “The Novel”, “Non-Fiction Writing”, “The Business Side of Books”, “The Occasional Author”, “Playwriting”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateDec 3, 2014
    ISBN9781447481157
    How to Become an Author: A Practical Guide - With an Essay from Arnold Bennett By F. J. Harvey Darton
    Author

    Arnold Bennett

    Arnold Bennett was a prolific English novelist and leading realist author during the early twentieth century. In addition to his fictional work, he also wrote selected nonfiction and criticism, including his insightful book How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day.

    Read more from Arnold Bennett

    Related to How to Become an Author

    Related ebooks

    Self-Improvement For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      You Too Can Write A Novel

      Mar 23, 2022

      You Too Can Write A Novel
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      IBPA Publishing University

      Aug 15, 2020

      IBPA Publishing University
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Occupational Records

      Dec 21, 2021

      Occupational Records
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Non-fiction Opportunities

      Nov 7, 2024

      Today I found Out is a popular US website whose editorial team are always looking for new writers who can pen interesting factual articles on a wide range of subjects, writes Gary Dalkin. They have sections on animals, entertainment, history, languag

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reach Out To Readers: Author Newsletters 101

      Oct 28, 2024

      A comprehensive book marketing plan includes multiple channels to reach readers where they are. An author website catches people via search engines; social media and advertising can drive anything from awareness to purchase; and influencer collaborat

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Post-colonial Bad Jokes

      Mar 25, 2021

      Post-colonial Bad Jokes
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Putting A Gloss On Big Ideas

      Mar 28, 2024

      THE TERM “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” is tautological: all intelligence is artificial, in the sense of being man-made. There is nothing new about the notion of robotic intelligence; from the Golem to Google, we have been haunted by the Cartesian model o

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The ABCs of Freelance Success

      Oct 7, 2024

      Many freelance writers, especially those at the beginning of their careers, tend to place almost all of their professional focus on one specific component: craft. They work extra hard to master the basics of effective nonfiction writing because they

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Politics of Gatekeeping

      Oct 7, 2020

      FOR many emerging writers, literary magazines are a way to get a foot in the door, to snag a byline, and to build a portfolio of work that might one day lead to a full manuscript, a chapbook, an artistic collaboration, or whatever form success might

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Global Non-fiction Market

      Aug 4, 2022

      Founded in 1914, The New Republic is a left-leaning ‘progressive’ US political magazine and website. The print edition is published ten times a year and has a circulation of 50,000, while the website features between 1-5 articles a day, and has appro

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How To Make Money, And How To Steal It

      Aug 19, 2022

      It s a judgement of how punch-drunk we are with the corruption of politics in South Africa that the Nelson Mandela quotation chosen by Mkhabela to open his first chapter takes one’s breath away: “We have committed ourselves to [being] leaders trying

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How Not To Earn A Living

      Oct 29, 2020

      IN THE OLD DAYS most surveys of literary opinion confined themselves to politics and international affairs. How were you intending to vote in the general election? What did you think of the Iraq War? Here in a cash-strapped age, the focus tends to be

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Search Of The Right Stuff

      Jun 24, 2021

      THE SECRET AUTHOR is not a Conservative. He rarely looks at the current Cabinet without feeling the need of a bath, and his position is that of a disillusioned Labour voter who believes that the greatest political tragedy of the past thirty years was

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why So Few Men Take Up The Pen

      Jun 27, 2024

      Why So Few Men Take Up The Pen
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Brief History of How Writers Earn a Living

      Nov 2, 2020

      Most writers take it for granted that they deserve to earn money from their creative labor. In fact, it’s common for publishers to be publicly shamed if they pay in “exposure” or charge fees. But historically speaking, the idea that writers should be

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Enduring Influence of the Op-Ed

      Jan 22, 2024

      Despite fears that an array of new shortform writing on the internet would spell an end to the op-ed, the opposite seems to have happened. The post The Enduring Influence of the Op-Ed appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Young, Gifted — And Readerless

      May 25, 2023

      ROBBIE MILLEN, literary editor of The Times, could recently be found in the T2 section of that newspaper writing about the latest version of the Granta-sponsored “Best of British Young Novelists” list. For those of you not absolutely up to speed with

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Yomi Adegoke Contains Multitudes

      Mar 21, 2024

      People struggle to hold multiple ideas in their heads at once, and so attempt to pigeonhole female writers, but I am very comfortable leaning into duality. The post Yomi Adegoke Contains Multitudes appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Six Ways To Make Things Better

      Dec 23, 2020

      The secret author has been accused of — that dreadful modern word — “negativity”. He has, even more distressingly, been accused of cynicism. He has been accused of living in the last century. He has been accused of being a middle-aged, middleclass an

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Margaret Sullivan: ‘There Is A Moral Component To A Life In Journalism’

      Dec 13, 2022

      When Margaret Sullivan began her storied career in journalism in the late 1970s, 7 in 10 Americans said they trusted the news, she reports. Coming of age just after the era of Watergate, she describes how exciting it was to work in a newsroom, a job

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Revisionist View of Arts, Culture and Tech

      May 10, 2018

      We are dedicated to demystification, to self-teaching, and to encouraging people to think for themselves. Thus our Motto: ‘access to tools and ideas’ ... We recommend rather than attack ... We change with the times that we help change ... We update o

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      True Grit

      Oct 24, 2018

      True Grit
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      I’d Like to Thank the Academy

      Oct 15, 2021

      Many of my students, and even some younger colleagues, think—assume—that creative nonfiction is just part of the literary ecosystem; it’s always been around, like fiction or poetry. In many ways, of course, they are right: the kind of writing that is

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chronicling Life’s White Machine

      Jul 31, 2017

      It is not hard to mentally recast writers as social media types: Knausgaard, the maximalist oversharer; Lerner, the pomo ironic; Cusk, the reticent philosopher; Heti, the more traditional diarist.   The post Chronicling Life’s White Machine appeared

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Writing with Fewer Limitations: The Millions Interviews Natasha Brown

      Jan 27, 2022

      Natasha Brown discusses what brought her to writing, her book Assembly’s path to publication, and her fascination with writing about moments of social flux. The post Writing with Fewer Limitations: The Millions Interviews Natasha Brown appeared first

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What the Texas Observer Has Taught Me

      May 1, 2019

      WHEN I FIRST PICKED UP A COPY OF THE TEXAS OBSERVER I was an undergraduate at UT-Austin, working in the periodicals section of the LBJ Library. Back in the early 2000s, students still mostly did their research the old-fashioned way, by turning pages

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for How to Become an Author

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      How to Become an Author - Arnold Bennett

      CHAPTER I

      THE LITERARY CAREER

      How to Become an Author

      CHAPTER I

      THE LITERARY CAREER

      Divisions of Literature.

      In the year 1902 there were published 1743 volumes of fiction, 504 educational works, 480 historical and biographical works, 567 volumes of theology and sermons, 463 political and economical works, and 227 books of criticism and belles-lettres. These were the principal divisions of the grand army of 5839 new books issued during the year, and it will be seen that fiction is handsomely entitled to the first place. And the position of fiction is even loftier than appears from the above figures; for, with the exception of a few school-books which enjoy a popularity far exceeding all other popularities, and a few theological works, no class of book can claim as high a circulation per volume as the novel. More writers are engaged in fiction than in any other branch of literature, and their remuneration is better and perhaps surer than can be obtained in other literary markets. In esteem, influence, renown, and notoriety the novelists are also paramount.

      Therefore in the present volume it will be proper for me to deal chiefly with the art and craft of fiction. For practical purposes I shall simply cut the whole of literature into two parts, fictional and non-fictional; and under the latter head I shall perforce crowd together the sublime and reverend muses of poetry, history, biography, theology, economy—everything, in short, that is not prose-fiction, save only plays; having regard to the extraordinary financial and artistic condition of the British stage and the British playwright at the dawn of the twentieth century, I propose to discuss the great How of the drama in a separate chapter unrelated to the general scheme of the book. As for journalism, though a journalist is not usually held to rank as an author, it is a fact that very many, if not most, authors begin by being journalists. Accordingly I shall begin with the subject of journalism.

      Two Branches of Journalism: The Mechanical.

      There are two branches of journalism, and it is necessary to distinguish sharply between them. They may be called the literary branch and the mechanical branch. To take the latter first, it is mainly the concern of reporters, of all sorts, and of sub-editors. It is that part of the executive side of journalism which can be carried out with the least expenditure of original brain-power. It consists in reporting—parliament, fashionable weddings, cricket-matches, company meetings, fat-stock shows; and in work of a sub-editorial character—proof-correcting, marshalling and co-ordinating the various items of an issue, cutting or lengthening articles according to need, modifying the tone of articles to coincide with the policy of the paper, and generally seeing that the editor and his brilliant original contributors do not, in the carelessness of genius, make fools of themselves. The sub-editor and the reporter, by reason of highly-developed natural qualifications, sometimes reach a wonderful degree of capacity for their duties, and the sub-editorial chair is often occupied by an individual who obviously has not the slightest intention of remaining in it. But, as a rule, the sub-editor and the reporter are mild and minor personages. Any man of average intelligence can learn how to report verbatim, how to write correct English, how to make incorrect English correct, how to describe neatly and tersely. Sub-editors and reporters are not born; they become so because their fathers or uncles were sub-editors or reporters, or by some other accident, not because instinct irresistibly carries them into the career; they would probably have succeeded equally well in another calling. They enter an office early, by a chance influence or by heredity, and they reach a status similar to that of a solicitor’s managing-clerk. Fame is not for them, though occasionally they achieve a limited renown in professional circles. Their ultimate prospects are not glorious. Nor is their fiscal reward ever likely to be immense. In the provinces you may see the sub-editor or reporter of fifty who has reared a family on three pounds a week and will never earn three pounds ten. In London the very best mechanical posts yield as much as four hundred a year, and infrequently more; but the average salary of a thorough expert would decidedly not exceed two hundred and fifty, while the work performed is laborious, exacting, responsible, and often extremely inconvenient. Consider the case of the sub-editor of an evening paper, who must breakfast at 6 A.M. winter and summer, and of the sub-editor of a morning paper, who never gets to bed before three in the morning. Relatively, a clerk in a good house is better paid than a sub-editor or a reporter.

      I shall have nothing more to say about this branch of journalism. Its duties are largely of an official kind and in the nature of routine, and are almost always studied practically in an office. A useful and trustworthy manual of them is Mr. John B. Mackie’s Modern Journalism: a Handbook of Instruction and Counsel for the Young Journalist, published by Crosby, Lockwood & Son, price half-a-crown.

      The Literary Branch.

      I come now to the higher branch of journalism, that which is connected, more or less remotely, with literature. This branch merges with the lower branch in the person of the descriptive-reporter, who may be a genius with the wages of an ambassador, like the late G. W. Steevens, or a mere hack who describes the Lord Mayor’s procession and writes stalwart emissaries of the law when he means policemen. It includes, besides the aristocracy of descriptive reporting, reviewers, dramatic and other critics, financial experts, fashion-writers, paragraphists, miscellaneous contributors regular and irregular, assorted leader-writers, assistant editors, and editors; I believe that newspaper proprietors also like to fancy themselves journalists. Very few ornaments of the creative branch of journalism become so by deliberate intention from the beginning. The average creative journalist enters his profession by drifting into it; the verb to drift is always used in this connection; the natural and proper assumption is that he was swept away on the flood of a powerful instinct. He makes a timid start by what is called freelancing, that is, sending an unsolicited contribution to a paper in the hope that it will be accepted and paid for. He continues to shoot out unsolicited contributions in all directions until one is at length taken; then he thinks his fortune is made. In due course he gradually establishes a connection with one or more papers; perhaps he writes a book. On a day he suddenly perceives that an editor actually respects and relies on him; he is asked to come into the office sometimes, to do things, and at last he gets the offer of an appointment. Lo! he is a full-fledged journalist; yet the intermediate stages leading from his first amateurish aspiring to his achieved position have been so slight, vague, and uncertain, that he can explain them neither to himself nor to others. He has drifted into journalism. And let me say here that he has done the right thing. It is always better to enter a newspaper office from towards the top than from towards the bottom. It is, in my opinion, an error of tactics for a youth with a marked bent towards journalism, to join a staff at an early age as a proof-reader, reporter, or assistant sub-editor; he is apt to sink into a groove, to be obsessed by the routine instead of the romance of journalism, and to lose intellectual elasticity.

      The creative branch of journalism is proportionately no better paid than the mechanical branch. The highest journalistic post in the kingdom is reputed to be worth three thousand a year, an income at which scores of lawyers, grocers, bishops, music-hall artistes, and novelists would turn up their noses. A thousand a year is a handsome salary for the editor of a first-class organ; some editors of first-class organs receive much less, few receive more. (The London County Council employs eleven officers at a salary of over a thousand a year each, and five at a thousand each.) An assistant editor is worth something less than half an editor, while an advertisement manager is worth an editor and an assistant editor added together. A leader-writer may receive from four hundred to a thousand a year. No man can earn an adequate livelihood as a book-reviewer or a dramatic or musical critic, pure and simple; but a few women by much industry contrive to flourish by fashion-writing alone. The life of a man without a regular appointment who exists as a freelance may be adventurous, but it is scarcely worth living. The rate of pay for journalistic contributions varies from seven and sixpence to two guineas per thousand words; the average is probably under a pound; not a dozen men in London get more than two guineas a thousand for unsigned irregular contributions. A journalist at once brilliant, reliable, industrious, and enterprising, may be absolutely sure of a reasonably good income, provided he keeps clear of editorships and does not identify himself too prominently with any single paper. If he commits either of these indiscretions, his welfare largely depends on the unwillingness of his proprietor to sell his paper. A change of proprietorship usually means a change of editors and of prominent contributors, and there are few more pathetic sights in Fleet Street than the Famous Journalist dismissed through no fault of his own.

      On the whole, it cannot be made too clear that journalism is never a gold-mine except for newspaper proprietors, and not always for them. The journalist sells his brains in a weak market. Other things being equal, he receives decidedly less than he would receive in any pursuit save those of the graphic arts, sculpture, and music. He must console himself by meditating upon the romance, the publicity, and the influential character of his profession. Whether these intangible things are a sufficient consolation to the able, conscientious man who gives his best for, say, three or four hundred a year and the prospect of a precarious old age, is a question happily beyond the scope of my treatise.

      Fiction.

      I have made no mention of the natural gifts of universal curiosity, alertness, inextinguishable verve, and vivacious style which are necessary to success in creative journalism, because the aspirant will speedily discover by results whether or not he possesses them. If he fails in the earlier efforts of freelancing, he will learn thereby that he is not a born journalist,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1