Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/124

THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE to begin with a volume of verse, follow it up with collected essays, usually of literary criticism, then a novel or two, a four-act play—and at that time he has reached a point where he feels at liberty to confine himself to whichever form he finds most congenial. A man with this sort of training may, of course, have wasted himself to some extent in misplaced efforts, in attempting certain things for which he was not temperamentally fitted; but he seldom makes the mistake of trying to fit an idea into the wrong literary framework. It is the other type of craftsman, so common in this country: the man who starts with a