If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit - Softcover

Ueland, Brenda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555974716 ISBN 13: 9781555974718

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2007

Synopsis

But we must try to find our True Conscience, our True Self, the very Center, for this is the only first-rate choice-making center. Here lies all originality, talent, honor, truthfulness, courage and cheerfulness. Here lies the ability to choose the good and the grand, the true and the beautiful.

In her ninety-three remarkable years, Brenda Ueland published six million words. She said she had two rules she followed absolutely: to tell the truth, and not to do anything she didn't want to do. Her integrity shines throughout If You Want to Write, her bestselling classic on the process of writing that has already inspired
thousands to find their own creative center. Carl Sandburg called this book "the best book ever written about how to write." Yet Ueland reminds us that "whenever I say ‘writing' in this book, I also mean anything that you love and want to do or make."

About this title

About the Authors

BRENDA UELAND (1891–1985) spent many years living in New York, where she was part of the Greenwich Village bohemian crowd. She received an international swimming record for over-eighty-year-olds and was knighted by the King of Norway.

Andrei Codrescu, who lived in socialist Romania until the age of nineteen, is a commentator on NPR's All Things Considered. A professor of literature at Louisiana State University, he lives in New Orleans.

From the Back Cover

In her 93 remarkable years, Brenda Ueland published six million words. She said she had two rules she followed absolutely: to tell the truth, and not to do anything she didn't want to do. Her integrity shines throughout If You Want to Write, her best-selling classic on the process of writing that has already inspired thousands to find their own creative center. Carl Sandburg called this book "The best book ever written about how to write". Yet Ueland reminds us that "Whenever I say 'writing' in this book, I also mean anything that you love and want to do or to make". Ueland's writing and her teaching are made compelling by her feisty spirit of independence and joy.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

If You Want to Write

A Book about Art, Independence and SpiritBy Brenda Ueland

Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2007 Brenda Ueland
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781555974718

Chapter One

Yes, it has made me like working to see that writing is not a performance but a generosity.

I find that I wrote this to someone three years ago:

"Forgive me, but perhaps you should write again. I think there is something necessary and life-giving about 'creative work' (forgive the term). A state of excitement. And it is like a faucet: nothing comes unless you turn it on, and the more you turn it on, the more comes.

"It is our nasty twentieth century materialism that makes us feel: what is the use of writing, painting, etc., unless one has an audience or gets cash for it? Socrates and the men of the Renaissance did so much because the rewards were intrinsic, i.e., the enlargement of the soul.

"Yes, we are all thoroughly materialistic about such things. 'What's the use?' we say, of doing anything unless you make money or get applause? for when a man is dead he is dead.' Socrates and the Greeks decided that a man's life should be devoted to 'the tendance of the Soul' (Soul included intelligence, imagination, spirit, understanding, personality) for the soul lived eternally, in all probability.

"I think it is all right to work for money, to work to have things enjoyed by people, even very limited ones; but the mistake is to feel that the work, the effort, the search is not the important and the exciting thing. One cannot strive to write a cheap, popular story without learning more about cheapness. But enough. I may very well be getting to raving."

And so now I have established reasons why you should work from now on until you die, with real love and imagination and intelligence, at your writing or whatever work it is that you care about. If you do that, out of the mountains that you write some mole hills will be published. Or you may make a fortune and win the Nobel Prize. But if nothing is ever published at all and you never make a cent, just the same it will be good that you have worked.

1938

Continues...

Excerpted from If You Want to Writeby Brenda Ueland Copyright © 2007 by Brenda Ueland. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555974716
• ISBN 13: 9781555974718
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 180