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

After the bustle of the holidays and a couple of nasty colds, Ed and I have been struggling with getting back to being creative. I’m avoiding working on my novel. He’s nervous about an upcoming sermon. We thought IF YOU WANT TO WRITE might help, so I’ve been reading a chapter or two aloud to him each night.

We’ve read several books together. We were entertained and enlightened by C. S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters”. Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” helped us through our anxiety when we bought an office condo. We tried to re-read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, but found it lacking in the appeal it held for us when we were younger. We were pretty sure IF YOU WANT TO WRITE would still appeal, and I was happy to find it in my office bookcase.

I, along with a jillion other wannabe writers, read this book over thirty years ago and eventually used it in my writing classes. It is a classic, first published in 1938 and updated in 1987. The chapter titles are wonderful. My favorite is, “Why Women who do too much housework should neglect it for their writing.” I am still trying to live just that way.

And, yes, the book still works. IF YOU WANT TO WRITE manages to be both reassuring and challenging. Ms. Ueland is very clear as to how she sees things. She believes that everyone’s voice is unique, she encourages authenticity, she disses critical teachers who squelch writers’ passion, and she insists, as William Blake says, “Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires”. She means artistic desires, not prurient ones. (I almost changed the word “prurient”, but decided Ms. Ueland would tell me to go with my first instinct.)

Ms. Ueland is also clear that her observations and suggestions apply to any artistic endeavor—painting, sculpting, movie-making—and that if we free ourselves from “clouds of automatic verbiage” and “uninterestingness”, we will work at our art freely, not from “grim, dry willpower” but from “generosity and the fascinating search for truth.” That sounds like a dream to me, but, as I continue to read this book, one I am committed to pursue.

Re-reading IF YOU WANT TO WRITE is a New Year’s Gift to myself and to Ed. I get why Carl Sandburg said it was “the best book ever written about how to write.” And, if you want to  write, by all means, read it. Twice.

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