LEARNING TO WRITE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XIII, 28 March 1896, Page 366

LEARNING TO WRITE.

Ethel, according to her own schoolgirl phrasing, ‘ hated ’ to write compositions, and her dislike was about evenly divided between the burden of selecting her own subject and the embarrassment of having one chosen for her. In the first case, she never knew what to take, and in the last, the teacher, according to her prejudiced fancy, seemed bound to select the very topic about which she knew nothing, and in which she had no interest. Finally, on a miserable Saturday when her composition was, after much tribulation, finished, she freed her mind to Aunt Laura.

‘Nothing to write about!’ said auntie. ‘Dear me, what a pity, in this big world full of interesting things !

I suppose you have such a dull time that nothing worth telling ever happens to you.’ ‘Oh no, it isn’t that,’ said Ethel. * Lots of things happen, but nothing important enough to write about. Why, our compositions have to be read before the whole school, and how the girls would laugh if I should get up and give an account of some of our larks!’ * Now I’ll tell you what I’d do,’ said Aunt Laura ; ‘ I’d keep a note-book.’ * Like Hawthorne’s ?’

‘ Well, I dare say it would be rather different from his, and so it ought to be. You must write in it the interesting things that happen to you, and put them down in your own way. Make up your mind not to show the book, and then you won’t be tempted into affectation. Don’t moralize, and don’t indulge in reflections, if you can help it.’ ‘ Why, I shouldn’t even know how to begin ‘ I’ll show you. A dozen times a day you tell me things that interest me greatly. Think of that country walk you were so happy over last week. When you got home, you described the blue sky with its little tufts of woolly clouds, the bank where you found bepaticas ; you told me exactly how you scraped away the dead leaves, and what a ridiculous time you had in trying to beg a string at the farmhouse. ‘ Then you repeated the story of the poor little girl you met on the way home, and said she remarked, as she took some of your luncheon, that she liked fruit cake better than sandwiches.’ ‘ But I couldn’t put that in a composition !’ ‘ Perhaps not, but the habit of writing will not only help you to gain fluency in the use of your pen, but it will teach you to observe. ‘ Besides, you will have in your note-book a stock of material to which you can turn when you have nothing to say. ‘ Remember, above all things, to put down only the exact truth—for nothing that has not the ring of reality is worth preserving—and not to indulge in general reflections that had become commonplaces before you were born.’ The book was bought, and Ethel, with a few relapses, kept it zealously. At the end of six months she declared that the plan was a ‘ splendid ’ one. Perhaps other young folks, forced to become writers against their will, might think so, too.