You begin your search for a publisher by mail, since they must have time to read your story before saying whether or not they'll publish it. As you take your manuscript to the post office, you wonder how long it will be before you get an answer — a week or maybe two? It seems hard to wait even that long. But strengthen your patience, for it may take as long as five or six weeks.

1/ A Story and a Manuscript, in Pages, Pictures, and Print: A Book In The Making, written and illustrated by Joanna Foster, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958

It may take weeks or months to get all the words on paper. One day, however, the first copy, or draft, of your story is finished. It sounds fine and you go to bed delighted with your accomplishment. The next morning your pleasure fades. It doesn't read nearly as well as you had thought. It is wordy in some spots; hazy in others, and there is much that could be improved. Back to work. By rewriting here, cutting there, shifting paragraphs somewhere else, you bring a revised or second draft into being. There may be a third and even a fourth draft before you are satisfied. Some authors have rewritten a single sentence more than a hundred times before it pleased them. Writing is an enjoyable but not a particularly easy job!

1/ A Story and a Manuscript, in Pages, Pictures, and Print: A Book In The Making, written and illustrated by Joanna Foster, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958

Before you put down any words, you must have something to say. Through your book you will be talking to hundreds and thousands of people you have never met. What do you have to tell that they will find interesting?

1/ A Story and a Manuscript, in Pages, Pictures, and Print: A Book In The Making, written and illustrated by Joanna Foster, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958

The Band Wagon
Most people like to do what others are doing and believe as others believe. Propagandists know and capitalize on this human tendency.
     "Everybody is joining our cause," they say. "Come along or you'll find yourself alone."
     It requires will power and the ability to think for oneself, to resist hopping on the band wagon. Do not be fooled into joining a movement simply because "others are doing it."

Chapter 23 Language and Logic, in Warriner's English Grammar and Composition Revised Edition, Complete Course, John E. Warriner and Francis Griffith, 1965

The Unproved Assertion
Repetition is not proof. Unless the restatement is accompanied by reasons, statistics, examples, or the statements of competent and unprejudiced authorities, it is no stronger than the original utterance.
   The following declaration seems to prove a point. Actually it does not because there is no evidence offered.

My candidate is the best qualified of all. In character, experience, education, and intellectual ability he is superior to everyone who is running for this office. No one even remotely approaches his qualifications for the position. He stands head and shoulders above the other candidates. Everyone admits his superior merits. Therefore he deserves your vote.

Chapter 23 Language and Logic, in Warriner's English Grammar and Composition Revised Edition, Complete Course, John E. Warriner and Francis Griffith, 1965