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No investment is necessary—everyone has some paper and a pencil or pen around the house. That's what you have to begin with. The next important thing is putting your imagination to work. Look around your home. Take a keen peek at your own family, then, if you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings, take a look instead at your friends and neighbors. You'll notice, if you observe carefully, that they all have odd habits, funny ways of doing and saying things. These individual peculiarities are sure-fire "meat" for light verse. Listen to what is said around you. You'll discover the kernel for a clever four-line rhyme with amazing speed. You might even take a look at the family dog. I did and got the idea for this piece of verse which I sold to the magazine. Our Dumb Animals.

The wagging of my puppy's tail
I have the inspired notion
Is answer to man's search for
Perpetual e-motion.

YOU MAY not be an expert at first—it takes time to examine life around you and to ferret out the funny side of things. But with practice it becomes second nature.

I, for instance, first started fitting light verses together about ten years ago in a cold army barracks used as a classroom by the training officer who just happened to be a Texan with a hearty sense of humor. One day when I was supposed to be solving some kind of strategical problem, my mind was working instead on the coming weekend's passes. The catch (I was thinking) was that they didn't allow us enough time to get to the nearest sizable town and back again without being AWOL. So I had been scribbling out:

Catastrophe's rampant
When we get two-day passes
And it's five-hundred miles
To the nearest town's lasses.

The captain must have seen the poetic gleam in my eye, because he casually strolled over, picked up my "work paper" and read my "classwork." Fortunately the verse struck him as funny and he laughingly handed it back to me, suggesting I catch up with the class. Actually I never did catch up, but the last laugh was my five-dollar check from Judge for the same verse which they ran under the title, "Isolation."

Yes, I was lucky at first because I was in uniform, constantly surrounded by aspects of army life that could be given a funny twist and rhymed. During those years, light verse with army-navy flavor was in great demand, and so I was easily encouraged by the acceptances I got from humor magazines and armed services journals. Even today there's still a healthy market for military-flavored verse in the humor magazines.

Of course I had a barracks bag full of rejection slips, too. I thought that there were some magazines I'd never be able to break into. But Country Gentleman was one of the "big boys" I was absolutely determined to appear in—at least once! After submitting about a dozen different groups of verses (four or five at a time), I finally began to receive encouraging little notes from Margaret Schnug, then editor of the "Chaff" department. Each successive note became a bit more hopeful until, at last, it happened: a check for a short Thanksgiving verse. But even in the face of that sweet victory, two sour notes rang out mockingly: when the verse appeared, my name was misspelled; then soon after there was an editorial shakeup and "Chaff" was taken over by a new editor who now won't even write me a non-encouraging note. My thanksgiving was short-lived!

IN MY years of light verse ups-and-downs I've learned a number of surprising things. For instance, I've had proved to me over and over again: "One man's meat is another man's poison." One editor may send a verse back to me saying, "This is one of the worst things you've ever done." Then in the mail a couple of weeks later will come another editor's letter thanking me for sending him such a fine verse filler. You've guessed it, it was the same doggone verse!

When I have trouble selling a humorous rhyme after several trips out to editors (and that's the rule—not the exception), the verse undergoes an examination. I'm the doctor; it's the patient. I try to diagnose what's preventing the verse's being accepted and printed. Often I decide the title isn't funny or appropriate or "punchy" enough; then I have to dream up a better one. Sometimes I find that the whole verse is too long and has to be cut—either vertically or horizontally. This means that I just drop whole stanzas or else go through each line, cutting out words but being sure to maintain an even number of beats to present a regular pattern. Always I try to make the verse as concise and as simple as possible, working up to a good last line punch.

I've learned not to become discouraged, also. And that takes a lot of learning! It's not a bit unusual to have to send a verse out twenty to thirty times before it hits the right editor at the right time. A lot more than once, a verse of mine will land a check on its twentieth trip out. I've learned to judge my seasonal stuff so that it gets to the editor's desk about six months before its season. This gives the editor sufficient time to consider it, buy it and schedule it for the proper month. Many editors are thinking of their Christmas issue in July!

I used to write about a dozen verses a month with some regularity. Lately I write in "spurts." When the mood seizes me, I work out four to six humor-rhymes in one sitting, then probably don't write another one for a whole month. But methods of writing are highly personal. They vary widely, according to individual circumstances.

I keep about fifty pieces "out on the road" all the time. This means that there are that many of my rhymes on their way to, at, or coming back from editorial desks. My selling average is high now, I start a new verse going to the top markets, and when it doesn't sell to one of them, I gradually work down to the 25 cent-a-line publications. In this way I manage to sell almost everything I write. One reason for this is that I've come to recognize "unsaleable stuff" and don't bother sending it on to editors. This saves postage, time and face.

My earnings average $15 to $25 a month. Only this much because I have to devote more time to other forms of writing. If I concentrated completely on light verse, I'm certain that I could double or triple this amount—all the time still attending to my regular non-writing business. While I won't become even a fraction of a millionaire at this part-time activity, still I find it's a lot of fun to be part of the league of light versifiers.

YOU'LL BE surprised to discover how many joking rhymes are being published today, once you become aware of all the humorous verses now used in daily newspapers and in the popular weekly and monthly magazines. Lots of people—men, women, and campus kids—are turning the hobby of rhyming-for-fun into a money-making pastime. Among these funsters and punsters—as well as among the almighty editors—humorous verse is referred to as "light verse." Also in editorial circles this verse-with-a-grin is called "filler verse," since usually its chief function is to fill in the little spaces on magazine pages that would otherwise have to appear nakedly white. Among highbrows, "vers de societe" means almost the same thing: sophisticated verse that is light and amusing. Perhaps this best describes the kind used in The New Yorker. But let's be down-to-earth and just call our rib-tickling brain-children simply "light verse."

The hobbyists who have been selling their light verse to editors generally agree that the best place to begin putting your wits to work is in your own home—sort of like charity. Around the house, for example, lots of amusing things happen on the spur of the moment, are laughed at, then forgotten. A light versifier doesn't forget, though. He grabs paper and pencil and jots down the incident, maybe in just a few words, perhaps in detail. If time is available, the light verse can be worked out right then and there, while the inspiration is hot.

Or it could happen that you notice a glove has been thrown on a chair in your bedroom; then your eye catches hold of a mitten crumpled up on the top of your dresser. This might result:

A glove is a member
Of the old Mitten Clan
That's gone Communistic
With a Five Finger Plan.

Okay, you have a novelty verse with a timely twist. This should sell to a newspaper column or to one of the magazines which looks kindly upon verse with a current slant. (I published this four-liner under the title of "Revolutionist.")

Now take a look at your family—or friends. There's older brother, John prematurely bald. So how about:

This one bald fact
I face with sorrow:
My hair today
Is gone tomorrow.

Nothing earth-shaking about this verse, but it was published quickly, under the title of "Pate Fate" in The Rotarian.

A good many selling light verse writers always carry notebook and pencil with them, no matter where they are going. What is usually considered waste time can be put to good use: waiting in a doctor's or dentist's office; riding on bus or streetcar; those last fifteen minutes of a lunch hour; that half-hour before supper is ready. Such time is commonly whiled away in daydreams or crossword puzzles. Sharpening your wits with a light-verse-on-the-fire is a lot more challenging—and profitable, too!

You don't have to be a poet, either. Sense of rhyme and sense of rhythm help to start with, of course; but these qualities can be developed easily enough. It would be a good idea to head for your nearest public library and check out light verse collections of Ogden Nash, Phyllis McGinley, Richard Armour, Margaret Fishback, Dorothy Parker and other humorous rhymesters. You might even get hold of Armour's book, "Writing Light Verse," or Clement Wood's "Poet's Handbook," which has a helpful chapter on light versifying. Any of these books will give you a clearer picture of what good light verse is. If you want to see what's actually being published today, consult current issues of The Saturday Evening Post, where you'll find light verse not only on the "Post Scripts" page, but also scattered through the back of the book. Follow the "Chaff" page in Country Gentleman, "Stripped Gears" department in The Rotarian; "Parting Shots" in The American Legion Magazine; "Bypaths" in Pathfinder; or the "Family Features" page in The Christian Science Monitor. All of these humor sections use the kind of light verse that is popular with their particular readers right now, today!

YOU MAY get ideas for your own light verse from what you read during the time you're studying as a beginner. But later on, you'll find that it's more successful to draw from life around yourself. The personal foibles of people you know is a never-ending source. People constantly take on new idiosyncracies and quirks. These are "grist for the mill."

Here's a verse about vacationers which I sold to The Christian Science Monitor under the title "Destination Change":

Up to the mountains we hike,
Down to the shore we trot;
The aim of summer vacation
Is to travel to where you're not.

Hobbies make a good spring-board for light verses. Under the title, "To the Point," this was bought by Laugh Book Magazine:

The wife who works in needlecraft
Hears heated words to spare
Each time she leaves her shafts of steel
In hubby's favorite chair!

But the whole wide range of hobbies is fair game and those of which you have any knowledge at all can be worked into saleable items.

The eternal topic of love gets plenty of fun poked at it through the medium of light verse. So to get in the swing, have a field-day with Cupid, yourself. There are plenty of markets which look especially for love-toned material; not only the pulps, but the slick periodicals consider love a good peg to hang a verse on. I sold this verse to Judge with the title "Fair Enuff":

What's the shape of a kiss?
Do you really care?
Well give me one
And we'll call it square.

When considering the women's magazines and parent-slanted journals, the subject of children is a good test to see just how clever you can be. Youngsters are constantly doing and saying funny things. What could be more natural for putting to verse? This leads you to think of the field of children's verse, which has long been in great demand. Numerous young people's and children's magazines use a considerable amount of light verse on a primary level. Studying the markets (reading copies of the actual magazines for which you intend to write) is the rule here. See how "funny" you should make the rhymes; how simple the wording should be; how obvious the "punch" should be—if any. It would be worth your while to look into this end of your hobby, since children's publications make up a wide market, both the newsstand variety and the religious house periodicals.

YOU MAY ask: Just how much am I going to earn by putting my wits to the creation of light verse? That's a legitimate question all right, so let's start at the top and work our way down to the less pleasant bottom. You might guess that The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Collier's, and Good Housekeeping pay highest rates. But here the competition is toughest, also. Around $25 for a quatrain (four-liner) and generally $5 per line for longer verse is what comes from these four slicks.

From such top-ranking markets, you go down to the general broad level of payment: $5 per verse. Some of the larger circulating slicks do pay $10 and $15 each time, but the bulk of the periodicals stick to a base of $5. This refers to the popular quatrain. Longer verses, of course, realize more money. And remember too that after you have sold to an editor several times, you begin to earn bonus rates. When you send out longer pieces, count on $1 per line and then be happily surprised with anything over that!

Journals with smaller circulation, such as religious and children's magazines and other secondary markets, can only pay from 50 cents to 25 cents a line when purchasing verse fillers. Those which still pay the ancient line rate of 10 cents compose a good field for the beginner, but once out of that rank, it doesn't pay to ship off your sparkling rhymes to these dime-a-line places. You might derive more pleasure just giving them away to your local paper for prestige in your own small pond!

Studying your markets is a "must" if you want to sell your hobby-products with any regularity. One excellent way to do this is hie yourself off to the periodical room of the largest public library nearby. Spend hours poring over the magazines which use light verse. Study the kinds of subject matter used and how handled; the length of the verses. Also get your hands on the latest issues of the two leading market annuals: Writer's Market and The Writer's Handbook, which list the periodicals to which, you can safely submit your verse manuscripts. The monthly editions of these writers' magazines are also good reference for marketing: Author & Journalist, Writer's Digest, The Writer and Writer's Journal. They give up-to-the-minute reports on what various editors are asking for; magazines' changes of address and personnel; the birth of new publications and the demise of going journals. All of this information should be kept in your files, unless you have a miraculous memory and can store such details up there in your cranial region.

And speaking of files, I have found that a regular card-index filing system is necessary if you really want to sell your light verses with business-like success. Each verse I write immediately has its own file card typed out. In the upper left corner, I type the title. Then below I mark the date it's submitted and the name of the magazine, each time this verse is mailed out. If it is returned, I note the date of receipt beside the magazine name and strike that line out lightly, continuing the process until the verse is sold. At the time of sale, I remove the card to another file drawer or box, noting on the back of the card the amount of payment and the date of the issue in which the verse appeared.

When you begin submitting to markets, it is best to type your verses out on regular 8½-by-11-inch white typing paper, using a well-inked ribbon in your machine. In the upper left-hand corner of each sheet, type your name about an inch from the top; beneath that your street address; and below, your city, zone, and state. Try to center your verse on the sheet of paper. Type the title entirely in capital letters, roll your paper down three spaces and then, again centering below the title, type the verse double-spaced. Neatness, of course, is an asset to any manuscript!

I've found that unless a verse is an exceptionally well-turned seasonal piece, an almost "sure hit," it doesn't pay to send a single sheet out at a time. The best system is submitting four at once; not less than three, not more than five. I always enclose a self-addressed-stamped envelope with my verses. I use a standard number ten envelope (legal size) and one slightly smaller, so that it will slip into the number ten without folding. If you can't do this, fold your return envelope twice and insert it in the fold of your manuscripts. The two envelopes and four sheets of paper will go through the mail for a single 3-cent stamp.