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I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

Brenda Ueland

But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible–villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word
BRENDA UELAND

Believe Ordinary World
Sometimes I think that perhaps the most competent business men, and lawyers and doctors, who must be at the office at nine o’clock every morning, do not realize this and take more credit for initiative and industry than they deserve.
BRENDA UELAND

Credit Doctor More Morning Office Realize
Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.
BRENDA UELAND

Effort Lilies People
It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one’s mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.
BRENDA UELAND

Art Go Letting Mistake
Self-trust is so important. When you launch on a story, make your neck loose, feel free, good-natured. And be lazy. Feel that you are going to throw it away. Try writing utterly unplanned stories and see what comes out.
BRENDA UELAND

Lazy Self Writing
Advertising companies hire the very brightest, wittiest young people to write for them. Not one single sentence of it is worth repeating. Why? Because it wasn’t meant.
BRENDA UELAND

Advertising People Writing
If you write something and they all tell you it is bad – editors, critics, everybody – think it over and you may become convinced that they are right (though you are not to be ashamed or discouraged for a minute, but keep on writing).
BRENDA UELAND

Editors Thinking Writing
Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.
BRENDA UELAND

Acceptance Inspirational Unique
Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.
BRENDA UELAND

Sometimes Thinking Two
And it is why all the bright women of the world, who if more were expected of them, might do important work, but who instead have a chronic feeling of ineffectiveness and sloth.
BRENDA UELAND

Ineffectiveness Instead might Sloth Women
These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: “I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget.” But they have no slow, big ideas.
BRENDA UELAND

Busy Cutting Ideas Thinking Waiting
the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.
BRENDA UELAND

Better Person Way Writing
You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.
BRENDA UELAND

People Talking Writing
Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.
BRENDA UELAND

Self Speak Thinking
You can argue with a theologian or a politician, but doctors are sacrosanct. They know; you do not. Science has its mystique much more powerful than any religion active today.
BRENDA UELAND

Active Religion Science Today
I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out.” And if you have no such friend,–and you want to write,–well, then you must imagine one.
BRENDA UELAND

Boss Feel Friend People Want Write
And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don’t, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.
BRENDA UELAND

Children Enemies Friends Husband
Why should we all use our creative power….? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
BRENDA UELAND

Art Compassion Fighting
But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi–like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth–do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them.
BRENDA UELAND

Artist Peace People
And least of all – which is so important, too – to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force…When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
BRENDA UELAND

Imporatnt Least Listened Strange
Orthodox criticism … is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off.
BRENDA UELAND

Helping Imagination Others People
There is that American pastime known as “kidding” – with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.
BRENDA UELAND

Enthusiasm Feelings Passion
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Husband Murderer
… when I am really alone some power seems to grow in me. … Conjugality made me think of a three-legged race, where two people cannot go fast and keep tripping each other because their two legs are tied together.
BRENDA UELAND

Race Thinking Two
If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: ‘Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!’ you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.
BRENDA UELAND

Children Doors Mother
Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self.
BRENDA UELAND

Esteem Self Trying
I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months.
BRENDA UELAND

Fun People Writing

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

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I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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