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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

we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.
BRENDA UELAND

Ends Fixed Thinking
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
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

Grows Ideas Listening
… the great artists … do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.
BRENDA UELAND

Artist Materialistic Want
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 this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years – the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.
BRENDA UELAND

Against Complete Deaaded Presently
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
Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good.
BRENDA UELAND

Love You Mean Nice
Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.
BRENDA UELAND

Love Talking Three You
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
To have the external pressure of a job removed is very astonishing. Your own will is now your only motor and it has no horse-power.
BRENDA UELAND

Horse Jobs Morning
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
Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Creative Power Live Present
The only way to love a person is…by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish.
BRENDA UELAND

Alive Believe Listening
Don’t think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee.
BRENDA UELAND

Coffee Skulls Thinking
You Do Not Know Is in You- an Inexhaustible Fountain of Ideas. Another reason for writing a diary is to discover that the ideas in you are an inexhaustible fountain.
BRENDA UELAND

Fountain Ideas Knows

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).

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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).

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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