January 20, 1933

Last night as I lay in bed, the old question came up and for the first time, I saw it with some clearness. The medium of expression for me will not be the animal story, the fiction story or the type of article of Samuel Scoville, Jr., Herbert Ravenell Sass, or Archibald Rutledge or the rest. As far as I can see they have gone to pot and are not going to be able to stage a comeback. Scoville is completely played out. There is nothing left for him to do. He has already gone through the agony of repetition and plagiarism and I can well imagine what has happened to the rest. If I follow their example it will be the same for me. What I want is a medium that will not play out, some means of expression that will enable me to keep on as long as I live. What will it be.

The only solution as far as I can see it is to pattern my form after the things that have appealed to me most. What do I like to read. What in the better journals gives me a thrill of pleasure when I sit down to read. Usually essays or articles of the out of doors with a philosophical twist, quaint homely things that show a love of the soil and primitive enjoyment of nature. Is this following in the steps of Thoreau or Burroughs? Not quite. This must be something a little different from the rest. Once I find my medium and quit groping and producing instead, I believe I will have achieved something very essential to my peace of mind....

Nature magazine and its various petite animal stories fails to thrill me. Field and Stream and the rest, I can never read with pleasure. Even animal stories of the usual kind, bore me. It is rather a false hope to think that I can ever then produce anything of that type that will ever amount to anything. In order to do anything, I must have an ideal, a dream to follow and if I write stuff that I am not interested in, how can I hope to write anything others will also read or enjoy. No, that is sure, I must write the type of thing that I would enjoy most myself. The workman who takes no pleasure in his work cannot help but be slovenly, particularly if he realizes that it will not be a thing of joy and beauty when he is through. It becomes then merely a job, the task of finishing something distasteful and can never hope for immortality. If on the other hand, you can produce something that you realize yourself is good and enjoy, then there must be the joy of creation in it. A painter who realizes that he is doing something mediocre, a writer who realizes that he is writing something that when he gets done will be dull, is like the man who building a house knows that no one will want to live in it because of its ugliness even if he does get paid for it. Will such a creator even though he gets paid a prodigious sum for it find much of the artist's or creator's happiness in his work? I fail to see it. So it must be with me. If I am to do anything really worth while, I must find a medium which will take all I can give it, something that I can look at with pride and say, "that is my handiwork," the best that I can do. Then and only then will you be doing anything worth while and only then will you receive the true artist's reward, the satisfaction of knowing that you have created something substantial and worth while.

Thought last night of my name, Sig Olson though all right in the woods is not what you might call a distinctive name for the type of article that you are thinking of writing. Your full name - Sigurd Ferdinand Olson - on the other hand has a sort of a swing to it that might easily create and hold a following.

Now that so much is settled, what then will it be?