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Be bold, free, and truthful.

Brenda Ueland

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

Acceptance Inspirational Unique
Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk.
BRENDA UELAND

Coffee Strong Writing
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
Be bold, free, and truthful.
BRENDA UELAND

Freedom Truth Truthful
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
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
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
… 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
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
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
Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.
BRENDA UELAND

Diaries Honest 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
Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.
BRENDA UELAND

Drawing Thinking Writing
You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.
BRENDA UELAND

Listening Thinking
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
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Husband Murderer
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
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
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
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
The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
BRENDA UELAND

Best Way Trying Way
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
Science and vivisection make no appeal to a theological idea, much less a political one.
BRENDA UELAND

Animal Powerful Science
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
Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.
BRENDA UELAND

Creative Creative Power Live Present
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

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