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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

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
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
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).
BRENDA UELAND

Editors Thinking Writing
… 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
You must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there, so that you can write opulently and with self-trust. If you once become aware of it and have faith in it, you will be all right.
BRENDA UELAND

Believe Self Writing
So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing.
BRENDA UELAND

Important Original Self Two Writing
You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.
BRENDA UELAND

Listening Thinking
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
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
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
BRENDA UELAND

Listening People Tired
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND

Best Way Trying Way
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
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
Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it.
BRENDA UELAND

Knows Thinking Work
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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