Don Marquis, one of our own American authors, WTOte a book a few years ago about a cockroach named Archy and called it archys life of mehitabel In it the roach pretends that he is a human being, and it is great fun. Why not try it the other way? Pretend that you are a bug, a fish, a fowl, or any animal or bird for that matter, and write what you think of human beings. You have certainly had experiences with mosquitoes, spiders, mice, cats, dogs, snakes, or horses that would give you a wealth of material to work with.

If you like to explain things that are quite complicated, such as inventions, games, or the like, there is a field wide open for you. Magazines such as the American Boy, Boy's Life, Popular Science Monthly, Reader's Digest, and Good Housekeeping will give you hints, and lots of them. These magazines and others you know have stories of ways of life that are different, ways to get along with people, how to do things, how to make things, and many other cues for a good start.

Under letters and diaries we stressed the point that, after all, people do enjoy hearing about you! Who are you? What do you look like? How do you walk? What are your outstanding characteristics? Are you sure that you know? All of us look like individuals from the outside, but we find out in time that we have within us two or more selves. Some wc show to the world at one time, some at another.

Sinners and saints, Puritans and gypsies, geniuses and nitwits, good sports and poor sports - these arc the characters we take on under different circumstances. Sometimes we are proud of our act and sometimes we regret our choice, but, after all, that is how we really learn to take our place in life. We learn to don the character we most admire and to subdue the other ones. While going through this process, you will certainly find enough amusement in undue embarrassment and the wrong timing of acts to fill a host of books. If you tell it interestingly enough, your readers will forgive you; so talk out as if you were really discussing the hard knocks of somebody else and not yourself at all. In this type of writing be sure that you tell the events in order, and then stop.

It's fun to wish you were someone else, too. What would you do if you were a soda clerk, a teacher, a world traveler, a radio announcer for just a day? What were your favorite characters when you were a child? What did you like to he?

What's your hobby? Of what use, interest, and value is it to you? Albert Payson Terhune is an author because his hobby is dogs, especially collies. He became so enthusiastic over his hobby that he wrote about it and his contagious spirit spread to others. We have very little need for a Kindness to Animals Week if we remember his stories. Radio programs are full of folks who had hobbies, rode them to their delight, and told about them.

The best fun of all along this whole line of autobiography is to make a Career Book for yourself. Surely by this time you have decided to be a plumber, an aviator, a doctor, a nurse, a dancer, a poet, a bus driver, an architect, a metal worker, or something. Choose the career you like the best on your whole list. Look up books and magazines that can tell you the requirements for such a trade or vocation. Perhaps you know people who are already engaged in the work you think you like. Ask them for their list of things necessary for success. These sources will tell you whether you are choosing something artistic, mechanical, social, mathematical, linguistic, scientific, executive, clerical, or musical. They will tell you whether you need accuracy, orderliness, tact, observation, alertness, patience, imagination, sympathy, responsibility, or attention to details, and how much of each quality you need. Ask yourself if you have these qualities or if you can develop them.

Next, have your advisers, books or people, help you check the health requirements - what you need in the way of strength, eyesight, hearing, nimblencss of fingers, voice, color sense, appearance, agility, endurance, and balance. How do you match up?

Now find out the preparation necessary for your vocation. Will you have to go to school to learn it? If you do, to what kind of school? How long are the courses? What will this cost your parents? What will it cost you?

You can find pictures in our many magazines that will show phases of the vocation that you have chosen. Why not clip them out and let them illustrate your story? While we are on the subject, let's all agree on Fifty-Two Weeks' Kindness to Books and never cut one up. Tear away at the pulp magazines and the papers, but spare the books. A paste pot and a batch of beautifully colored magazine pictures will give you a Career Book that will fill your heart with joy and your brain with ideas!

Material for stories can be used, or shall we say expressed, in many different ways. You can try writing a simple story. If your story is a success as far as you are concerned, why not do what adults do - make a play out of it for people or puppets? You can find a story that you would enjoy playing with in this way in the works of others, too. Be a producer, as is suggested in Chapter 14! Include radio programs, for they are great fun for campfires or evenings at home. Perhaps your family has a movie camera and rolls its own entertainment. Why not write a family skit and put the whole group to work in a really live play full of suspense, drama, fun, and what not? It will be priceless to see Uncle Bill in a play, being a Prince Charming. You might even be able to coax the whole family into costume. If they won't get into the spirit of it right away, try them on a March of Time idea or some similar movie that appeals to you.