I can’t remember when I first encountered the writing book that changed me. I distinctly remember purchasing my own copy from the Quality Paperback Book Club in the early 1990s and then buying a second copy of it when my first copy walked to parts unknown. I must have lent out the second copy, because the dog-eared version on my shelves now is copy number three.
It happens to this book. You lend it out, and it disappears. Be prepared. Other writers have told me the same thing. “Oh, Brenda Ueland’s book? I lend that one out all the time. But sometimes, it doesn’t come back.”
It grabs hold of you, this book. At first, it seems disconnected, almost rambling. Quotations float in and out from William Blake, Wordsworth. However, once Brenda’s ideas about creativity and the source of creativity grab you, they don’t let go.
The book is If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, and it is the writing book that changed me.
Who Was Brenda Ueland?
She had two simple rules for living: to tell the truth, always, and not to do anything she didn’t want to do.
Born in Minneapolis to immigrant parents in 1891, she attended Barnard and became a freelance writer and journalist. Her prolific output of articles, stories, plays, and, eventually, her most famous work, If You Want to Write, accompanied a Bohemian lifestyle and unconventional ideas for her time. She led a writing class, and her book is based on the lessons she taught her students. She died in 1985, leaving many of us whom she had never met feeling like her students, too.
I’m one of her students.
The Best Book Ever Written About Creative Writing
Carl Sandburg once called If You Want to Write the best book ever written about creative writing, and if it’s not too bold of me to say so, I agree with him.
The book’s premise can be summed up as:
- Everyone is creative
- Everyone has something important to say
- Writing should come from one’s honest, unforced self
When I first read this book, I felt a spark of excitement and recognition. Why, I’m like one of her students. Trying to write in fancy ways rather than simply, plainly telling the truth of my experience.
Finally, I Can Be Myself
I had teachers tell me to write like Hemingway, Dickens, Melville, Poe; I studied Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante. I loved all these writers, but trying to force me to write like them was ridiculous.
I needed someone to let me be me, to write like me, and that someone was Brenda.
Throughout the book, she provides examples of why we should write freely and without reservation, honestly and truthfully sharing what we see and feel. We should focus like children, creating a play — didn’t you write and perform plays as children? I did. She describes the “happy absorption” of children deep in the creative flow, and I remembered times in my childhood feeling that flow, that happy absorption, whether it was coloring the paper backdrop for our neighborhood performance of Rumpelstiltskin in third grade that we gave in the basement playroom of my house, or building cardboard houses for my Barbie dolls.
I wanted to tap into that creative flow, to have that happy feeling when writing. Writing had felt that way to me throughout high school. I often stayed up late, typing away on my mother’s Royal portable, writing horror and science fiction novels and short stories. As I grew older, majored in English, and told my college professors of my ambition to be a writer, they did their best to give me advice: write like Hemingway! Write like Joyce Carol Oates! Write like XYZ!
The more I was told to write like someone else, the more stilted and uncomfortable my prose became. I wrote stories I hated because my teacher for a short story workshop asked me to stop writing all those silly paranormal stories and focus on “true literary fiction.” As far as I could tell from the examples she shared with me, true literary fiction was a nebulous story with unlikeable characters and no real resolution, people wandering around drinking tea or having conversations I didn’t understand.
Everyone told me to write like someone else . . . but no one suggested I learn to better express myself to write like me.
Teaching Writing Lessons and Life Lessons
Brenda Ueland gave me permission to write like me. Throughout her book, she not only exhorts the reader to write their true feelings, but she shares examples of how writers improved their pieces once they shed the self-conscious, “I’m trying to be Shakespeare” feeling.
More than teaching me how to free myself from everyone else’s expectations about my writing, this book changed my view of the people around me. As I entered the marketing profession and eventually became a manager, Brenda’s views about writers became my views about people, period.
Brenda’s maxims that “Everyone is creative. Everyone has something important to say” became part of my management approach. With every marketing team I have managed through my career, I treat everyone with deep respect, seeing each one as creative and with something important to say or contribute. This has built stronger teams, better communication, and greater outputs. It’s as if people can sense it. I don’t say it aloud. It’s become part of how I treat others: with dignity and respect. If we are all channels of creativity, and each of us has something important to say, we are each worthy of the highest regard.
A Constant Companion on the Writing Journey
For over forty years, this book has been my constant companion. Every few months, I pick it up for a shot of inspiration. I read a few passages. I think about Brenda encouraging the little servant girls, shopkeepers, and everyone else in her classes in the 1930s to write from their hearts, to let their spirits soar free. If there is only one book you add to your writing library, make it this one. It’s not for everyone, but if it is for you, it will resonate quickly and deeply. It is truly a book that changed my writing life and my inner life, and a book I’m grateful to have discovered early in my career.
I sit at a sleek computer now, instead of that battered old olive-green Royal typewriter. I will always try to write with “microscopic truthfulness” thanks to this book. And when I do, my work is better for it.
Jeanne Grunert is the president and founder of Seven Oaks Consulting, a business-to-business content marketing agency. She is an award-winning writer and direct marketing expert with over 30 years of writing, marketing, and business experience. Prior to founding Seven Oaks Consulting, Jeanne led marketing for divisions of McGraw-Hill Education, Teachers College Columbia University, The College Board, and retail, publishing, and financial service companies in the New York City area. Known worldwide for her exceptional leadership and communication skills, Jeanne works seamlessly across cultural and corporate barriers to achieve outstanding results. She holds an M.A. in writing and an M.S. in direct and digital marketing (awarded with distinction) from New York University, as well as certifications in social media marketing, content marketing, and adult education. Originally from the New York City area, Jeanne currently resides with her husband, John, and many pets on a 17-acre farm in rural Virginia. When not leading marketing teams through her work at Seven Oaks Consulting, she enjoys gardening, reading, cooking, and writing mystery novels.
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