If You Want to Write, Ch. 1
Ch.1 of Brenda Ueland's timeless wisdom, "Everybody is talented ..."
Introduction
I’d never heard of Brenda Ueland before reading her work, but her piece “If You Want to Write” has been in print and reprint since 1938. It seems to be the classic tome on writing, before there were scads of books on the writing craft, how to improve, sell, market, etc., that to my young eyes, takes the soul and heart out of the craft and shoves it toward marketing content consumption for an audience with an ever-shortening attention span.
Reading a book for pleasure versus reading or studying to learn more about crafting a book (story, or any other type of creative work) are two different things. As an old editor friend once told me, different eyes see different things. Ueland came from a different time, with widely ranging attitudes that, while some may feel familiar to us and our times now, may be totally alien to our understanding of “modernity” that we take for granted as having always been.
Ueland’s work appears to be regarded as a classic and her writing, from the initial read, appears to be fairly wise, honest, kind, and warm. It is meant to encourage the creative, regardless of age, sex, ethnicity, or creed, to take up the creative spark that exists in all of us, and bear the torch we have been given into the darkness that we often march into, unsure if the task we take on will be completed or compromised, either by outstanding outside forces, or our own failures of acuity, effort, or self-sabotage.
Chapter 1: Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say
Ueland’s first point in her opening page is that everyone has something worthwhile within them to say. Real writing requires effort and struggle, for it is a giving of the self from a core place within.
There is nothing arbitrary or has “glibness” as she puts it. Those who are glib, and I might also interject, are creating for the sake of having content—a regular criticism I see online and on Substack about the nosedive of quality writing—or spend little time really pondering what it is they’re making or writing, drop out of writing altogether. There wasn’t the element of struggle to create. Perhaps they didn’t feel it—which is my conjecture—but that it’s simply a thing that they spit out.
As she says, “It is just they did not break through the shell…” The shell of whatever ego or simplistic façade they were operating from, but my overall impression is, they focus too much on the surface and fail to dive deeper.
“We are all talented because we have something to express…” and later on, Ueland states “Everybody is original, if he tells the truth.”
This also speaks to the superficiality of much writing, especially in news cycles or for clickbait articles. We read to consume and stave off boredom, but adults I think have lost the skill of personal scholarship on a larger cultural level, and many may have failed to imbue that in their children. Personal family culture plays a huge role in what we take on as a hobby or activity for pleasure. If there isn’t industriousness—or creativity say—people are harder pressed to learn it if it didn’t come about from the members around the family unit.
To focus more on originality, people can tell if you’re being authentic and genuine, or just spouting. Most writing I encounter is fairly surface level and can be considered content filler just to have something there on the webpage. Ueland implies that by telling the truth you cannot help but be original, speaking to how our fear of how what we say or write will be perceived (a.k.a. writing to specific audience) changes the nature of what we write because there is already a filter of self-editing. Her point is that to achieve:
1. You are talented
2. You are original
You have to have self-trust, otherwise it will be like those who wash out and stop trying.
She also touches on the destructive power of criticism early in life on the power of the imagination, by fostering doubt and planting the seeds of insecurity—particularly insidious within families. Children appear to have an indominable spirit for creativity, likely because they are fresh and young, and unburdened by the worldly cares they pick up in adulthood.
The question then becomes, how do we recapture the joy of youth? Of that excitement and drive to create? I assert that wreckless passion can be balanced and tempered by the intellect, but also, simply sitting oneself down to do it, regardless of interruption. However, Ueland states that reckless passion dies young, “Because we do not see that it is great and important. We let dry obligation take its place. Because we don’t respect it in ourselves and keep it alive by using it. And because we don’t keep it alive in others by listening to them.”
If we are present to the other by witnessing in them the innate person, that creative spark, or even the Image of God that we are, we see the soul and keep it alive. We see them as the whole person, not merely the sadness or parts and pieces that we like for inconsistent reasons.
“Families are great murderers of the creative impulse, particularly husbands. Older brothers sneer at younger brothers and kill it.”
Teachers, critics, parents, and other holier-than-thou know-it-alls also can and do destroy what little creative spark and energy is left. I often will take the tact of, “Well, fuck ‘em.”
However, not everyone takes that perspective and keeps pushing, and to be fair, that attitude took many years of practice and toughening of the hide to build up.
Ueland also takes to task kidding, which in my experience is usually veiled envy or jealousy, meant to take small jabs at the other for one’s own projected insecurities. To remedy this, to others around us, we must communicate and be supportive in our “friendship” of the person to help them grow.
Her bit on page 7 about the entitled, elitist class of writers and critics who’ve made it somehow, according to whatever imposed standards have been set by those in the clique, savage the “attempts of ordinary people to write. The critics rap us savagely on the head with their thimbles, for our nerve. No one but a virtuoso should be allowed to do it. The prominent writers sell funny articles about all the utterly crazy, fatuous, amateurish people who think they can write.”
Her contention isn’t wrong, because those who are going to generate those opinions will continue to have them. The onus is on us, the ordinary people still learning, trying, striving, and dreaming, to do away with the anxiety and perfectionism these phantom gatekeepers generate because of the view that they have the keys to the kingdom and are the truly sophisticated arbiters of art and culture.
That isn’t to say that everything someone generates is art—I do think there need to be some benchmarks by which to measure, say, high literature from low-brow pulp, which also has its place. But Euland isn’t wrong, everyone can write, and not everything has to be a Pulitzer. Sometimes, we simply want to write for ourselves to work out our thoughts, and it doesn’t need to be shared with the entire world, which isn’t privy to every thought, opinion, or view we may have.
Following this idea of what is sophisticated in order to get into the upper echelons of the elite of writing society, we can develop our own worst inner critic that sabotages us rather than listening to the inner voice of the muse—I personally think of it as an extension of the Holy Spirit giving a good prod here and there—to create that item of our fertile imagination. And if it isn’t as good as Shakespeare, well so what? It’s yours and you made it. Even if it were to be destroyed in a fire, it would not take away that the thing you made is yours and consists of your heart, blood, and sweat.
To write, Ueland says, one must feel free, not anxious. The best teachers are those who continue to encourage and light up, who want you to tell them more of this delightful idea that you had that has now been born into being. One of her best pieces of advice is create your own muse, if you have no such friend. I might say, to create your own imaginary friend, who encourages you and tells your insecurities to piss off.
There also needs to be a note on legitimate criticism, where you take a critical eye to strengthen the work or writing, versus the “small, niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which things it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong…” Those are the types that have a bit of self-righteous pride and enjoy tearing you down because of their overconfidence in their self-importance, even if they seem well-meaning and nice.
“But I hate it because of the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that is snuffs out every year. It 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 very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.”
Ueland discloses that those with deep wells of heart, of the most tender variety, then become lost due to this insidious criticism, unless I have misread the gist.
One of the other takeaways from the last page is that even with passion, we still must work with practice at the skill/art/talent we are cultivating, for it is cultivation. These talents we possess will not flourish if we do them only once, or, if we are wounded because of careless or unhelpful criticism, well-meaning or not, and tucking it away to never shine again. One may have talent and skill, but we come better with practice over time, for our very creative soul depends on it for us to live. It is the lifeblood that sustains us—that connection to what is greater and sending it forward into the world.
“Work with all your intelligence and love. Work freely and rollickingly as though they 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.”
To purchase a copy of Brenda Ueland’s book to annotate yourself and follow along, visit me at Bookshop.org.
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All this holds true for everyone, especially in the arts, "where one never really knows if they have any talent." Robt. Wyatt. A parent can kill the desire in a child by criticizing them or never encouraging them. It takes a certain type of stubbornness and self-belief to go on pursuing one's vision and overcoming the negativity that surrounds them.