How to Write an Article

HOW TO WRITE AN ARTICLE PETER QUINCE A moment may arrive in your life when you feel you have enough material of one sort or another to make into an article for the instruction and betterment of your fellow men and perchance to add yet another laurel to your own unquestioned fame. This moment of conception is often delightful, but it has inevitably to be followed by the weariness of gestation for at least nine months (two years in the case of elephants and the WHO), culminating in an exhausting delivery which is far from anesthetic. Or it may be that you are invited to give a paper to an audience, and you find yourselfstrongly gripped by die idea that you should stand up and explain exactly what you mean to Harry the Horse, Spanish John, and Little Isidor. While elucidating your deep philosophies in the simplest terms to the circle ofnitwits who qualify for your friendship, you are in fact writing an article ofuniversalappealwhich willprovoke fan mailfrom every corner ofthe globe. It is really too easy. But heed this warning: If you try to impress your friends by the obscurity ofyour style, the use of esoteric neologisms and chronic logorrhoea, instead of leading them gently by the hand up the garden ofyour thoughts, the whole thing will be a flop. At the onset it is highly probable, and indeed it is a merciful provision ofMother Nature, that you should possess a clear image about the final product. Disillusion on this point will arrive in due course and must be accepted, and accepted gratefully, for it means that forces stronger than you are at work. You therefore (think you) have the material and an idea as to how it is to be shaped. Seize your pen and start writing at once. Do NOT begin at the beginning. Choose some aspect ofthe subject which is uppermost in 221 your mindat the moment and write fully about it. I repeat, do NOTbegin at the beginning. The beginning will come later and will come unexpectedly . Beginnings need that flash ofgenius which you cannot conjure up to order; and endings need damnably hard work for which you are not yet ready. So begin anywhere in the middle, and within an hour or two you will have a nice-sized chunk of good easy writing; and surely it can be fitted in somewhere? Well, we'll see. It may; or it may eventually have to be scrapped. In either case, it will have exercised your mind. Probably it will have exposed gaps in your material, and you will find the whole subject opening out in many directions. This is natural growth and must not be interfered with—yet. A time will come when selection will be imperative in order to keep the article within bounds. Don't forestall it. When you re-read diis chunk in a day or two's time, you will want to add to it. Go right ahead. Fearlessly. Don't try to condense it yet. Expand. Write fully. Cutting down comes much later. Sooner or later you will get stuck. Don't worry. Put it on one side. Sleep on it maybe for weeks, and let your bloated Unconscious do a bit of work for a change. Meanwhile make a fresh start on another passage. In the course ofa few weeks you should have quite a lot ofuseful fragments , like bits ofajigsaw puzzle, which you now have to try out in differentjuxtapositions . Some will fit together quite snugly, coalescing like soap bubbles. Others will have to be planed down at the edges before they will dovetail. Yet others will need additional "bridge passages" to fill in the gaps. "Bridge passages" have to be hammered out in the sweat ofthe face, and they are never so satisfactory as the bits that wrote themselves. Now look at the article as far as it goes. It is not what you thought you were going to write at the moment ofconception, is it? No, ofcourse not. It is infinitely better. Two things have happened. The article has taken charge ofitself, and you are finding out what it's all about. Now is the moment...