"stories," nor did I feel the least urge toward producing
fiction. I thirsted to find out how to prepare and market a manuscript
to _The Saturday Evening Post_ or _Collier's_, but the books in the
public library were all about the short story and the novel, Sunday
"features," the evolution of the printing press or the adventures of a
sob sister on an afternoon daily.

So I had to go out and get my education as a magazine writer in a school
of tough experiences. A few of these experiences are here recorded, in
the hope that some of the lessons that were enforced upon me may be of
help to other beginners.

The immediate results of my plunge into free lancing were:

JANUARY--not one cent.

FEBRUARY--$50.46. Seven dollars of this was for the magazine article. No
other magazine acceptances had followed the Wedge. I had not yet caught
the national viewpoint, nor had I picked up much practical information
about the magazine markets.

By March it was becoming painfully evident that a fledgling free lance
should, if he is wise, depend for a while upon a local newspaper for the
larger part of his income. In a school of hard knocks I learned to sell
"stories" of purely local interest to the Kansas City market, topics of
state-wide interest to the St. Louis Sunday editors, and contributions
whose appeal was as wide as the Gulf of Mexico to newspapers in Chicago
and New York.

Also I learned that if the free lance hopes to make any of these markets
take a lively interest in him, he will introduce his manuscripts with
interesting photographs. I rented a little black cube of a camera for
twenty-five cents a day. It had a universal focus and nothing to bother
about in the way of adjustments. To operate it you peeked into the range
finder, then threw a lever. Its lens was so slow that no pictures could
be taken with it except in bright sunlight.

I wrote about motor cars, willow farms, celebrities, freaks of nature in
the city parks, catfish and junk heaps--anything of which I could snap
interesting photographs and find enough text to "carry" the picture.

March saw me earn $126.00 by doing assignments for the city editor in
the mornings and "stories" at space rates in the afternoons for the
Sunday section. At night I plugged away at manuscripts hopefully
intended for national periodicals. But not until late in September did I
"land" in a big magazine. Then--the thrill that comes once in a
lifetime--I sold an article to _Colli