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

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
by Brenda Ueland

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
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Book Summary Information

Author: Brenda Ueland
Introduction: Andrei Codrescu
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-06-26
ISBN: 1555974716
Number of pages: 180
Publisher: Graywolf Press

Book Reviews of If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

Book Review: A Book for Every Writer!
Summary: 5 Stars

At Christmas, I came across my copy of this book, purchased in 1988. I have since re-read it many times. I also purchased a copy and had it shipped to my friend who has written 12 books on economics, Dr. George Glen Dawson. Glen, as I call him, participates in several writing groups on Long Island, NY. His inspiration to me as a mentor and friend and his love of writing showed me that he would love this book and sharing copies of it with the writing groups he participates in.

This book, reread many years after it's purchase, and much additional business experience AND formal education, has shown me much about living, loving, authenticity, writing, and art.

Dr. Dawson's validation of my writing has challenged me to do more of it as well.

He is my "Tuesdays with Morrie" kind of guy, a friend, a teacher, a guide.

I loved the book. It inspires me anytime I feel I am NOT up to a task or a writing assignment or living authentically for others and for myself.

Read it a few pages at a time, enjoy it like a lovely, delicious dessert that feeds your mind and your heart.

Thankfully, I did read this while selling advertising for The Wall Street Journal some years ago. It served me there, and it served me in graduate school a few months after purchasing this book.

Thank you, Brenda Ueland. May your words live on!

Judy Laughton Lilley, M.A. Counseling and Professional Psychology
Formerly Senior Advertising Account Executive for The Wall Street Journal in Saint Louis, MO. B.A. Radford University, Radford, Va.

Summary of If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

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."

This book so speaks to the contemporary writer that it is nearly impossible to believe that it was originally published in 1938. In If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland sets forth not just a philosophy about how to write or how to create, but also about how to live. Beginning writers will certainly be encouraged by Ueland's words, but even the most experienced have much to glean from Ueland's simple wisdom. "Everybody," writes Ueland in the opening chapter, "is talented, original, and has something important to say." Finding that something important involves embracing creative idleness ("the imagination needs moodling--long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering"), freeing "what we really think, from what we think we ought to think," and "thumb[ing] your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters." One must think, she says, "of telling a story, not of writing it." And when revising one's writing, she advises, "do not try to think of better words, more gripping words.... It is not yet deeply enough imagined." Finally, "whenever you find yourself writing a single word or phrase or page dutifully and with boredom, then leave it out.... If what you write bores you, it will bore other people." And just because If You Want to Write is passionate, sincere, and even spiritual, do not think it is not also witty. One footnote bluntly declaims, "No doubt my terms would horrify a psychologist but I do not care at all." Elsewhere Ueland titles a chapter "Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It for Their Writing." Amen, sister!

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