How To Tell Your Idea From A Hole In The Ground

( Originally Published 1944 )

Curse and blaspheme, and am devout in prayer.

HOW TO tell his idea from a hole in the ground is one of the great problems of the beginning writer. Yet it is, in truth, a very simple matter.

One type of writer goes at writing something like this he says to himself: "I will be a writer."

Why has he performed this profound feat of intellection? Why has he decided to become a writer? What things prompted him to do so?

Usually the things that prompted him to do so are all false.

Let us say that the individual under our microscope who has just decided to be a writer is undiplomatic. A diplomat is simply a man who sees to it that the enemy turns his back while knives are thrown at him. If they are thrown at him while he's looking he is apt to dodge them.

You may say, perhaps, that I am the least diplomatic of persons. True, in a sense. But only in a sense. I am not diplomatic on paper. I became a writer be-cause it amused me to say what I God-damned pleased. And in spite of anything American Free Speech could do to prevent it I have got a lot of it said. If it seems to you that my work is full of knives, believe me, kiddies, I have a right to throw those knives. I picked every one of them out of my own back. However, writing in order to have fun getting published a lot of what you want said is not the profit end to writing. The way I figured it was this: "Why do I want money? I want money for women, liquor, gambling, food, shelter, and fun."

What does fun consist in? It consists in something that makes you feel good inside. To feel good inside is the most wonderful thing in the world. I so gauged my writing as to have all the women, liquor, gambling, food, and shelter I could possibly use; and then, instead of going on in American fashion to pile up more dough for the Government to put the snatch on, I devoted the rest of my efforts to having fun, as I am doing now, this very minute. That is why I write. That is how I started to write.

Many writers, however, start to write merely be-cause their wives are bigger diplomats than they are. By that I mean that their wives howl about not being comfortable enough; so the poor mokes, instead of kicking the bitches in the teeth, spend their spare time —after they come home tired out from work trying to make more money to buy their wives more things. The wives, being diplomats, and men not, keep their husbands constantly kidded along into the idea that men can't live without them. Nonsense! When men's wives die do the men drop dead? Six months later they can hardly remember the name of the dame "without whom they could not live."

Another reason for writers beginning to write is that they are undiplomatic about their bosses. Being undiplomatic about bosses, they cannot get along with them. Since they cannot get along with them they try to escape from them. In trying to escape from them into writing they merely exchange one set of bosses for another set of bosses.

There are thousands of unsound reasons for trying to be a writer. The reason why most writers cannot tell their ideas from a hole in the ground is that they should not be writers at all. If they were cut out in the first place to be writers they would be able to tell their ideas from a hole in the ground easily enough. This writer-who-should-never-have-been is the one who wanders from one advertising doctor of prose to another and gets nowhere unless he is ,unfortunate enough to get one story published by a fluke, in which case his life is completely ruined.

The should-be-writer can always tell his ideas from a hole in the ground with the greatest of ease. He knows the difference between an idea and a piece of pediculous mental fermentation by the place from whence it comes.

Let me illustrate (and hold tightly to your seat-this is going to be hard) :

Let us say that you are an idiot trying to make more money to pour over your wife or to escape from your boss because you aren't shrewd enough. to get him to turn around before you bury knives in his back and get his job.

Determined to become a writer, you, select a magazine to which you wish to contribute (let us hope you are at least that smart) ; you then sit down and chart, OBJECTIVELY AND CONSCIOUSLY, an idea to send to the magazine. This, you tell yourself, is an idea for a story. Actually it isn't. It is an idea for a fur coat for the wife, or for the eluding of a time clock, and because it is conscious and objective it isn't any good. It might possibly be bought, if you're unlucky, but it still isn't any good. Why isn't it any good? Because it is not an idea. I do not mean that it is not an idea because it lacks Aht and Beauteh; it is not an idea because it has been achieved with about one tenth of your mind force; i.e., the conscious mind. Such a method of intellection may make advertising copy, or a movie, or some other such junk; but it will not make anything that will turn you from a peon or an uxorious sap into a writer. In short, you are trying to muscle your way into writing, which might be all right if you used all of your muscles, especially all of your brain muscle; but it isn't all right when you are using ten per cent of your brain muscle. It will get you into writing about as well as you would make out in a fist fight if you used one tenth of your muscles only.

There are always around two hundred thousand people in this country trying to muscle into writing, using only one tenth of their mind muscles. The great pity is that some of them sell something once in a while. That is because editors are very stupid. The happiest thing that could possibly occur to them is that they not ever sell anything, stop chasing fantoms, and go into something else.

There are in the Authors' League of America about thirty-six hundred writers, who represent all the real writers in the country, even the Aht and Beauteh writers. Those writers began writing either quite intelligently, or intuitively. With them the idea-of-write came out of the subconscious.

These real writers know an idea from a hole in the ground when they see it because they were successful people to begin with, almost all of them, with few complexes. They were adjusted to Society, Occupation, and Sex. Which means that they had learned to be sufficiently and decently hypocritical not to go around getting into quarrels with everybody they met; they had learned always to get the boss to turn his back before burying a knife into him, and they had learned to keep their own backs against walls at all times. They had forgotten, ALL OF THEM, the superstitious cant they learned in Sunday Schools, thereby ridding their minds of complexities having to do with neurotic fancies about Pie in the Sky, and don't ever sex for fun if you want to eat any of that Pie.

While living perfectly adjusted to Society, Occupation, and Sex, with ease around them and the mental relaxation needful to enjoy life, they had time to read. Among them were those who liked reading a lot. (I am talking, you understand, about the Authors' League writers, not the Story Magazine group of Aht and Beauteh literary chiropractors.)

Suddenly one day they had an idea for a story, or an article, or a novel. The reason they could tell it from a hole in the ground was that it came from the subconscious. It sprang into their minds, not full-blown, but enough to indicate that, like an iceberg-pretty as it was on top, with the sun on it there was nine tenths more of it below the surface.

NO WRITER OF ANY KIND COULD ANY MORE WRITE ANYTHING WITH HIS CONSCIOUS MIND ENTIRELY THAN AN ICEBERG COULD FLOAT WHOLLY ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER WITH NO PART OF IT SUBMERGED.

Invariably this idea that was born had "cooked" in the subconscious matrix for a long time without the proprietor being consciously aware of it. That is why, when the proprietor begins to pluck at it, he finds that it is backed up. It didn't come from a hole. It came from a mind.

When the proprietor puts this idea on paper he finds at once that it takes the form of something he has been reading. If he reads Collier's, for escape and relaxation, it will formulate itself somewhat in the Collier's style. If he reads novels, largely, it will shape itself up novel length, and usually be something that has some chance of contemporary acceptance. As he writes he finds that the thing develops more or less painlessly. When he sends it in, if it is his first piece of writing, he almost always gets with a rejection if he gets a rejection a note from an editor saying that they regret the rejection of the piece because it came so near; the editor invites the mode to contribute again.

This does not surprise the man who can tell an idea from a hole in the ground. It just annoys him a trifle. He throws the rejection slip into the waste basket, making mental notes that the editor who sent it was an idiot, and sends the story or book on somewhere else. His chances of eventual acceptance are enormous (unless he has taken a course in writing at some college or graduated from such a course in the local Post Office, by correspondence). It would never in the world occur to this type of writer to send the story to an advertising doctor of prose for examination. He'd say to himself: "Hell, if an advertising doctor of prose knows any more about how to write something salable than I do, why the hell doesn't he write something salable?"

Besides, he would be irritated with anyone who told him to "Straighten Up and Write Right." He knows damn well he's writing right. At best he will give a grudging acknowledgement mentally to the editor to the effect that writing, like music or surgery, takes some practice.

He goes along with his present occupation, what-ever it is. He doesn't let writing get on his nerves. He doodles at it, amuses himself with it, indulges him-self in it instead of hanging around political clubs or golf courses, if he is a man; or making a fool of her-self in some Woman's Club of female morons, if she is a femme.

After a certain amount of this doodling along, maybe ten years of it, editors begin to tear their hair out at the guy. They write him, notes like this:

"What do I have to do to get more copy from you? I've published everything you've sent me for a year, and the more I publish the less you send me."

He will have other comparable letters from editors and publishers. He will write back to them and explain:

"It was sweet of you to publish me and pay me for it, and I am grateful. But you see, I have a thriving brick kiln out of which. I make my living, and I can devote only a certain portion of my time to writing."

AT THE POINT where he begins to sell everything, and the total of those sales is steady, and mounting, and not merely approximates but exceeds what he is making in other quarters, this type of real writer bids farewell to his job or his business and settles down to write as a full-time occupation.

Because he has waited long enough to be on sure ground he does not block off his subconscious by keeping his conscious mind in such a turmoil that ten tenths of his mind won't work at all.

He goes off to California, or Florida, or-when we are not minding other people's business in it Europe, and lives the Life of Riley, taking his writing in his stride. When he gets an idea he can tell his idea from a hole in the ground because it comes out of a well-buttressed subconscious, has gestated there until it is done, and delivers itself with a minimum of bearing-down pains, without instruments. It doesn't have to be given to some advertising doctor of prose to be put into an incubator, because it is not prematurely born, and it is not too small nor too large; nor does it have elephantiasis of the gonads, or microcephalism.

Such a writer pays no attention to Hollywood. One day he gets a wire from a famous Hollywood agent, saying: "Come to Hollywood quick."

The writer wires back, collect: "It's nice here."

The agent wires back: "It's nice anywhere, but it's nicer in Hollywood."

This at last piques the author a bit so he inquires laconically if the agent can guarantee him twenty weeks at a thousand a week plus expenses back and forth. The agent is, delighted; the studio was fully prepared to pay fifteen hundred a week, and he can get a nice private piece of coin for having gotten the author so cheaply.

The author arrives in Hollywood. He looks at the agent as though the man were a viper. The agent loves it. If there is anything he hates it is hypocrites who pretend to be friendly. He invites the author to a party. The author says no; he would rather go to a wrestling match.

A few days later the author is taken to the studio, and enters his first story conference. He listens, says nothing, and when he is asked for an opinion upon what has passed, remarks:

"I'm sorry, gentlemen. I'm afraid I can't be of any use to you. Everything that all of you said sounded idiotic to me. I will let you out of your contract and return to West Palm Beach, where, even if the hunting isn't as good as it is here, the girls are at least mildly unused in some cases."

This impresses the studio no end. They tear up his contract and give him one for twenty-five hundred dollars; he is given a bigger office and a secretary with bigger mammary glands. Then they send around three helper-writers to attach themselves to him. Being an intelligent man, he understands the situation. For twenty-five hundred dollars a week why shouldn't he help the studio executives skin their stockholders? After all it was the executives themselves who gave him the twenty-five hundred a week, not the stockholders. His three helper-writers go off to Palm Springs, San Francisco, or Mexico City while he is writing the story, and he is no longer bothered with them.

One day he feels good so he calls in a stenographer and dictates fifty pages of a story in Master Scenes. He says: "Toots, I know nothing of screen technique. Fix it up, will you?" He gives her a hundred-dollar bill.

He goes to the Clover Club every night that he doesn't go to the Mocambo. He has a wonderful time.

Another day he dictates another fifty pages.

Because he doesn't care a hoot whether he lasts in Hollywood the studio executives consider him a genius.

When his contract is about to terminate he goes in and tells the executives he has completed his assignment; yawns, says he is bored, and will they let him out of the last few weeks of his contract so he can get the hell out of Hollywood.

They will not! He'll stay in Hollywood and like it, for a contract of thirty-five hundred dollars a week. So he says "Oh Dear," looks disgruntled and walks out.

(If you think I'm building a synthetic author here you're crazy; it is an almost exact description of at least two dozen writers I know in Hollywood.)