If You Want to Write

by Ueland, Brenda

• ISBN13: 9780915308941
• ISBN10: 0915308940
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-02-01
• Publisher: Graywolf Pr

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say	p. 3
"Imagination is the Divine Body in every Man"	p. 10
Why a Renaissance nobleman wrote sonnets	p. 17
The Imagination works slowly and quietly	p. 28
"Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires"	p. 40
"Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive"	p. 49
Be careless, reckless! Be a lion, be a pirate, when you write	p. 63
Why you are not to be discouraged, annihilated, by rejection slips	p. 71
People confuse the human and the Divine ego	p. 82
Why Women who do too much house-work should neglect if for their writing	p. 90
Microscopic truthfulness	p. 102
Art is infection	p. 113
The third dimension	p. 122
Keep a slovenly, headlong, impulsive, honest diary	p. 133
You do not know what is in you--an inexhaustible fountain of ideas	p. 146
On using the Imagination	p. 160
"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction"	p. 167
"He whose face gives no light shall never become a star"	p. 176
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