The author writes, "There has probably never been a time when so large a number of men and women, of all sorts and conditions, have yielded to the lure of authorship-and the elemental, naive, and random questions that they often ask show that there has never been a time when so many were in need of a word of friendly guidance. And this is precisely what the present volume claims to give. It does not pretend to point a royal road to literature. It has no ambition to create new authors. The aim of The Craftsmanship of Writing is to help would-be writers to reach a somewhat saner, more logical understanding of the real nature of the profession, both technical and artistic; to discount its delays and disappointments; and above all, to learn to help themselves by intelligent self-criticism. The most that this book or any other can do is to guide them away from certain wrong paths and toward certain right ones; they must cultivate industry, the art of taking infinite pains, and the habit of looking upon today's failures as the stepping-stones toward tomorrow's success. The laurels of authorship are worth the winning largely because there is no primrose path leading to them." But this book will help.