Book Marketing Breakthrough 03 - Learning from Masters
Oklahoma's first Rhodes scholar found a way to radically shorten the learning curve of writers - but he had to be talked into making a course to train others what he'd discovered...
Lesson 3 – Learn to Write From Masters.
NORMAN OKLAHOMA, 1937
Walter S. Campbell sat and read the report in front of him once again. Because this paper told of his own greatest success and failure, even though the teachers who compiled this report didn't know he existed.
These were creative writing teachers, the same course his own English Department of Oklahoma University assigned him to teach. In fact, this report was from the National Conference of Teachers of Creative Writing.
He despised teaching that course. As did the rest of the faculty in that department. But the head of the English department considered that since by then he'd sold and published over a half-dozen books and a few dozen articles, he would be best suited to teaching that red-haired stepchild no one else wanted.
It was his penance, of sorts. The English department academics were horrified that someone would make commercial success out of their carefully diagrammed expositions. As he was the “low man on the totem pole”, the noxious elective course duty then fell to him.
The Creative Writing course in that day had the same problems at OU as the teachers conference complained about:
First, the students did not learn to write. They seldom published, and became dissatisfied after that one semester because their teacher no longer had time to collaborate with them.
Second, colleges regarded creative writing classes as either advanced English composition or an unnecessary frill.
Third, writing courses were taught by people who were failures at selling their own writing.
Campbell paused at this, looking out at the typically hot Oklahoma summer day, through one of the open windows of that classroom he also used as an office.
What that convention of teachers found exactly summed up what he’d discovered after teaching the class for a few years. Added to all they described, this OU course was an elective. A course to get credit for something they didn't need to apply once they got their sheepskin. They weren't there to really learn how to write, only to fill out their elective requirements.
Once he'd gotten his first book accepted for publishing in 1927, he'd averaged nearly a book per year since.
He was curious how he had succeeded and others hadn't.
That led him to studying the back trails of various authors and found something else in their training process that he paralleled. His own first article was published when he was 17. The next article that was accepted was in 1920, about 16 years later. By then he was 40. In between, he received a full Oxford education as well as two years as an Army cavalry officer in WWI – and then his first published book in 1927.
In studying Pulitzer Prize winners and other famous authors, Campbell found they had spent between 10 and 20 years after their first work before they managed to get their next work published.
A couple of his mentors in England had been Sir Walter Raleigh, and George Gordon. They were published writers and encouraged him to write. That was the Oxford way. Graduating students were meant to make something of themselves in life after getting their degree. And this gave him a clue which proved out.
His reveries that day were interrupted by his old friend and fellow professor Ken Kaufman, who burst into his classroom-office without knocking. In his hand was the same year-old convention report Campbell had been reading.
“W.S., you've got to see this – oh, you have.”
Campbell had to smile. “Yes, Ken. President Bizzell sent me a copy too. What did you think of it?”
Ken took a student's seat across the table from Campbell's small lecture-desk and tried to compose himself. “It just says exactly what you've been saying all along – except you proved them wrong!”
Campbell shrugged. “And so? We've been over this route before. Three years ago, I got permission to work with those four students. Three of them got published – after I’d spent a year of all my free time teaching and collaborating with them.”
“And you wrote a book about it.”
Campbell paused, then reached down into the satchel on the floor by the small desk and returned with a thick sheaf of papers tied together with string over a press-board backing. “Oh, that reminds me. This is now in its best shape, a final draft. I've talked to Edward Skelly at Macmillan and he's agreed to look at it.”
He dropped the package on his desk, away from the papers he'd been grading. “Ken, I like to ask a favor of you – could you go over this book and see if it all still holds together? I'm about to submit it.”
Kaufman's eyes went wide. He steadied himself to seem casual as he reached for the package. As he riffled one of the package's corner pages thoughtfully with his thumb, he replied, “I'd be honored, W. S.”
Then he looked into his friend's eyes directly. “This doesn't let you off the hook, though.”
Campbell looked back at him with kind wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, but met his gaze without flinching. “I still can't afford to teach that kind of Creative Writing course. The English department has its approved curriculum and text assigned – and they already look down their nose at me for committing the Ivory Tower sacrilege of putting English to commercial use as a writer.”
Kaufman returned his gaze to the tied sheaf of papers under his hand on the desk edge. “Don't I know. Everybody has high praise for my book I got published this year – except them.”
Campbell smiled. “It's a good book. You did a good job. And all the praise you got for it was well deserved.”
Ken relaxed his shoulders as a corner of his own mouth turned up. “Thanks.” Then he leaned forward. “I still think you should reconsider. You among all people know what it takes to make a successful writer. After all, you inspired me to make my own book salable – and then go that tortuous submission route with it.”
Campbell sat back, bemused. “Anything for an old friend.”
Ken considered for a moment, then glanced down at the package on the desktop and back to Campbell. “OK, W. S., I'll look this over for you. But know that I'm not giving up on you. You're onto something big here.”
The next time Campbell saw Kaufman was when Ken caught up to him in between buildings on the small campus. It was yet another hot Norman Oklahoma afternoon, some days later,
Ken took his arm and led him into the shade of a nearby brick building. Kaufman was working to suppress a grin that kept working it's way out. “President Bizzell sent me to find you – he wants to discuss something.”
Campbell's eyebrows raised. “Is it bad or good?”
Ken looked down to his feet for a second, then back into Campbell's eyes. “Well, a little of both, but the bad is probably on my side.”
Campbell's own eyes twinkled at this. “What have you gone and done now?”
Then Kaufman's grin beamed wide. “You remember that picture in the paper the other day where four of our graduates were up north in another university taking classes to train them as writers?”
Campbell nodded in response.
“Well, W. S. I clipped that out and took it to President Bizzell. We had quite a discussion. I pointed out that the four OU students had to go elsewhere for training in writing. Sooners should not have to leave the state for such training, I told him, especially not with a man like you on the faculty.”
Campbell shifted his feet and glanced around, wary at what was coming next.
Kaufman continued, “Then I told him about your text on Professional Writing, how good it was, how you took a different approach – one that you'd helped me and those other four students learn.”
Campbell started to interrupt, but Kaufman held up his hand. “Wait – it's gets better. Bizzell organized a committee to develop a sequence of writing courses. And their findings came back. That's what Bizzell wants to go over with you.”
Campbell was speechless and just stood there.
At that, Kaufman grasped Campbell's upper arm firmly, and led him out of the shade toward the President's office on the other side of the campus.
President Bizzell stood as they entered his office. He was all smiles to Campbell and Kaufman. “Welcome, gentlemen, welcome.”
Bizzell gestured for them to be seated in the two over-stuffed chairs facing his desk, while he sank back into his own matching high-backed chair opposite. Whatever the president was working on before they entered was forgotten.
Campbell was relieved that President Bizzell's big office was a bit cooler than the Oklahoma day they had left outside. But the change in temperature didn't relieve the nervous sweat he felt on his neck.
President Bizzell reached over to a cardboard folder and pulled it toward him. Opening it, he removed a stapled set of papers, carefully typed. “W. S., this is the committee's findings. They studied this idea about upgrading our creative writing course into a sequence of writing courses – and unanimously voted to put you in charge of them.”
Campbell frowned deeply. “Sir, you know I am unwilling to be a party to the fraud of the old-fashioned creative writing courses. I will not be hamstrung by the English department's restrictions and antagonism toward my approaches.”
Bizzell sat back and nodded, smiling. “And how would you suggest we resolve this?”
Campbell started to relax at this unexpected reception. He paused, then continued, “I'll require an absolutely free hand to direct this training as I see fit.”
Bizzell nodded. “Of course.”
Campbell glanced at Kaufman, who was beaming with a broad grin. Then the Rhodes scholar turned back to the president. “And since I've made my name by using my spare time for writing instead of playing golf like the other English professors, I'll need a raise in salary.”
Bizzell didn't blink. “Done.”
Campbell sat back. This was just too easy. There must be a catch.
Bizzell glanced at the paper in his hands, then leaned forward. “The committee and I had some other ideas. I was thinking we should start a magazine to publish our student's work...”
Campbell himself sat forward again. “We will have no magazine. There are plenty of magazines in the country. If we set up a magazine on the campus, it will be edited by professors who will insist on academic and literary standards and so lead students into by-roads and away from the high road of publication. I will not care where a student published nor what kind of material he wrote so long as he wrote it well and got it published. I will not tell them what to write, or make any decisions for them, but would only show them how to implement their own decisions.”
Bizzell listened intently, the quiet smile never leaving his face. He nodded in consent. “But how about prizes for the best writing students?”
Campbell replied evenly, “No prizes, please. There is no prize which you could offer which will compare with the real prize of a sale to a good publishing house or a magazine of national circulation. Moreover, a local prize – like a local magazine – may set up false standards and lead my students astray from their main career.”
Bizzell again nodded in assent. Then leafed through the report briefly. “They recommend we offer graduate credit for the courses...”
Campbell interrupted. “That will only result in attracting people with little interest. in writing, who think it would be nice to take a few easy courses in creative writing after they get their bachelor degrees. I want nobody in my courses who is not hell-bent to write. We'll make all these courses for undergraduates. The journalism school can train the staff writers. We want to train dedicated freelance writers.”
President Bizzell again merely nodded, unperturbed at the interruption. And again he glanced at the report in his hand. “Here they recommend we set this up as a separate department with its own staff of instructors...” Then he paused, looking at the expression on Campbell's face.
Campbell considered the idea, then shook his head. “I came her to OU to teach, not administrate. We'll keep this simple. I need just one assistant, maybe two.”
President Bizzell smiled widely and stood. “Gentlemen, then that is the way it shall be. Our English department just got a new set of courses under your management. And you have my word that they'll leave you alone to teach it as you see fit.”
Campbell and Kaufman rose and shook his hand to seal the deal.
And the OU Professional Writing curriculum was born.
After this meeting, Campbell selected a local, proven author and editor to help him with the task of training students to write professionally. This was Foster Harris, who was hired based on his submitted partial bibliography of 800 published pieces of fiction and non-fiction. In that same year of 1937, Harris appeared in the “Writer's Yearbook” as one of the top ten pulpateers.
The Professional Writing course started in January in 1938, the same year Campbell's book, “Professional Writing”, was published. At first this two-man team simply delivered only two courses. Campbell taught one, based on that first book. The other was a laboratory course, where students were expected to write a 5,000 word story or article every week. Harris would then critique that work during a personal interview, and send the student back to rewrite and revise as they saw fit.
To write his first text, Campbell re-studied his own years of apprenticeship, and consulted the classic writers, going back even to Aristotle's Poetics for clues of what made good, acceptable, professional writing. His emphasis was on what would shorten the time span that the average writer had to endure before they could regularly submit salable pieces that were routinely accepted.
In this, Campbell found there was no magic formula that converted the writer's efforts into an editor's acceptance.
He found instead, that the nearest thing to a magic formula was simply
to write continually, regularly,
to study carefully the specific market where he wanted to write in order to gauge what that market would buy,
to study the works of the continuing top-selling masters in each market area, learning their techniques but not copying their writing style – and beyond all,
writing only about subjects which interested the writer greatly and involved him emotionally.
By the end of the first 20 years, Campbell's Professional Writing courses had graduated over 2,500 students. These became successful freelance writers, selling 250 books and 10,000 shorter works to 1,000 different magazines, totaling over $2 million in royalties.
Campbell was interviewed toward the end of his career, and related,
"We wanted our students to have one goal in mind: the best writing of which they were capable, and publication on a national scale.
"The greatest satisfaction we have is in the continual reports we get of publication by our own pupil and graduates. There is scarcely a magazine worth reading in North America in which their work has not appeared. And they have published, to our knowledge, more than 250 books; and the thing we are most proud of is that most of their manuscripts we never saw. Our aim was to train our students to go off and do their writing on their own.
"So we think we have the most successful writing school in North America, and since such schools have not caught on abroad, that means the world. At any rate, our people publish more, so far as we can learn, than the graduates of most of the other writing schools in the country combined.”
Principles of Learning to Write from Masters
to write continually, regularly,
to study carefully the specific market where he wanted to write in order to gauge what that market would buy,
to study the works of the continuing top-selling masters in each market area, learning their techniques but not copying their writing style – and beyond all,
writing only about subjects which interested the writer greatly and involved him emotionally.
The markets have changed since this Professional Writing course's heyday. The pulp magazines that these instructors earned their living from had ebbed in popularity. Now writing full novels has taken over.
In our own day, we've seen the markets shift again – into self-publishing as it replaced the majority of sales previously supplied by the traditional publishing firms.
To make a living now, in both self-publishing and traditional, an author has to take over marketing his own books.
Fortunately, there are those who have tested and revealed what marketing actually works in our modern days...
Improving our writing craft builds the core abilities any author starts with. And finding mentors who trained writers into professional authors, ones who make their living from writing, is next thing to examine...
How This Can Help You
This course evolved while I was wrapping up the first three books in this series - and became part of the fourth book (see below.)
In that fourth book are three mini-courses — this is just the second lesson of the first course in there. The reason for this last book is to give you actionable material to get you started simply. And speed your own progress.
Coming soon should be a chat thread on this course, where you can ask me anything about what I cover here. Meanwhile, DM me with your questions, or leave comments below.
And you can always buy me a coffee…
Earlier Lessons:
