From If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
To sum up-if you want to write:
1. Know that you have talent, are original and have something important to say.
2. Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privelege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.
3. Write freely, recklessly, in first drafts.
4. Tackle anything you want to--novels, plays, anything. Only remember Blake's admonition: "Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."
5. Don't be afraid of writing bad stories. To discover what is wrong with a story write two new ones and then go back to it.
6. Don't fret or be ashamed of what you have written in the past.
7. Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self.
8. Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandesecent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers. Remember how wonderful you are, what a miracle!
9. If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means your vision can see so far that it is hard to come up to it.
10. When discouraged, remember what van Gogh said: "If you hear a voice within you saying: you are no painter, then paint by all means, lad, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working."
11. Don't be afraid of yourself when you write. Don't check-rein yourself.
12. Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason & Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.
To sum up-if you want to write:
1. Know that you have talent, are original and have something important to say.
2. Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privelege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.
3. Write freely, recklessly, in first drafts.
4. Tackle anything you want to--novels, plays, anything. Only remember Blake's admonition: "Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."
5. Don't be afraid of writing bad stories. To discover what is wrong with a story write two new ones and then go back to it.
6. Don't fret or be ashamed of what you have written in the past.
7. Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self.
8. Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandesecent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers. Remember how wonderful you are, what a miracle!
9. If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means your vision can see so far that it is hard to come up to it.
10. When discouraged, remember what van Gogh said: "If you hear a voice within you saying: you are no painter, then paint by all means, lad, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working."
11. Don't be afraid of yourself when you write. Don't check-rein yourself.
12. Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason & Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.
