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Show IF YOU WANT TO WRITE If you want to write, do newspaper work, Is the stereotyped advice to folks who have the desire but not enough of the know-how to plunge In. Which newspaper and where, is the usual retort, with a trailer, "How can I get on a New York daily, so as to have the guidance of a great editor?" To which the answer, from those who know the game, is equally stereotyped, "Don't !" Of the people who know how, one might take Lessie Stringfellow Head, w hose name appears in the better magazines, mag-azines, and who has the courage to refuse editorial positions in New York and Washington. Mrs. Head has discovered dis-covered the fascination of doing the big work from the little place. Aa editor of the Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Dem-ocrat, she likes being friends with "everybody "ev-erybody from the corner policeman to the mayor, the very rich ami the very poor, the business man nnd his methods. meth-ods. All this permits the small-town editor to make the more intimate study of character that is invaluable to a writer." She likes being volunteer editor of the General Federation News, which she founded. That official organ ol 2,iXH.000 club women has given "acquaintance "ac-quaintance with the leading women in every state and a dozen foreign lands." And see likes the opportunity which is better In Arkansas than in S'ew York of being correspondent for "the great press services, one national na-tional daily, and four large metropo'i-tan metropo'i-tan papers, in addition to magazine and feature writing." Can any one else do as well from a ; far corner of Main Street? Let Mrs. Head answer: "I would advise any girl who wants to take up journalism to begin on the society column of a small-town paper. She should study newspaper methods, read a good book on journalism and editing and reporting, keep her eyes nnd ears, open for the 'big beat' and surprise her editor with good regulai news stories. "After beginning to do regular news reporting, she should get to be correspondent corre-spondent from her home town for as many newspapers as possible, in this way broadening iier field. Later If she wishes a job In a city she can usually get one on the city papers she has written for. I would not advise her to go to the big city until she has had years of experience, and not then until the Job seeks her. which It will if she bts grown to It." |