I ran into an old friend this summer. I hadn't checked in with her in awhile, but she had been right there on my bookshelf the whole time. Before Julia Cameron and her "artist dates" and Anne Lamott's "bird by bird" mantra, there was Brenda Ueland's seminal writing book, So You Want to Write. For a book first published in 1938, and rediscovered in 1983 by Greywolf Press, Brenda''s peppy prose hasn't aged at all.
So You Want to Write was the first book on writing I ever read. Honesty, I didn't know there was such a thing as a "how-to-write" book. By 1984, I had given up writing, except for journaling. I had written my whole life, with some decent success...for a kid. Competing against other young writers was one thing but against professionals? How could I hope to compete? So I didn't.
I missed writing, but figured it was an unrequited love. I was a school librarian, a job I loved but... I'd read the YA books at work and think "I could do better than this." Then I'd tell myself to shut up and forget about it. Until the next time.
Brenda was introduced to me via NPR. I was driving home from work when NPR reviewed So You Want to Write. It was the briefest of All Things Considered segments but I gathered that Ms Ueland believed anyone could write. You didn't need an MFA or an Ivy League degree. You didn't have to live a wild bohemian life in Greenwich Village, (although Brenda Ueland was quite the Village wild child in the Roaring 20's.) Everybody's life provides them with the tools to be a successful writer. All you really need is the desire, and willingness to be spend the time writing.
I had to find this book! In the days before Amazon, that meant driving almost a 100 miles, one way to the nearest bookstore. Thank God for Barnes & Noble; they had the book. It was all I could do not to floor the car all the way home to read my new treasure.
And what a treasure it was! I still have never read anything as intimate and reassuring. It was as if Brenda Ueland was sitting next to me, chatting about writing over steaming mugs of black tea. Write what you love, write with passion and abandon. Forget the spelling and the grammar and the symbolism and all the writing tricks and techniques. Just write! Write honestly, without pretense. Don't use ten dollar words unless that's exactly what you want to say. And remember...we all can write!
Encouraged, I read on. Write without regard to money or audience. Write for you!
Oh. I thought about all those things every time I scrolled a sheet of paper into my typewriter. Brenda was especially fond of William Blake and Van Gogh, two artists who created for their own pleasure. They also were almost unknown in their own time. Brenda herself was quite a successful journalist, writing for all the popular magazines of her day. She wasn't worrying about paying the rent! I would have to work on the "not worrying" part. I read on.
Observe life with JOY!!! (I could imagine Brenda fairly shouting those words.) Write what catches your eye, what you think about, no matter how insignificant. No self judgement. Just write. Be free! I picture Brenda on her feet, waving her hands as if to shoo me off to my desk. Go! Now! What are you waiting for?
After reading So You Want to Write I walked around in a golden haze of observation, as if I was in love. When you are in love, everything in your world takes on a special significance. Life smells sweeter, tastes better, feels soft as velvet. Everything moment has meaning. I was in love with words. I wrote and wrote and wrote.
Writing with JOY!! I banged out the first three chapters of a YA novel that I stupidly submitted without writing the rest of the book. When the publisher said they wanted to read the whole thing, I faked a week-long bout of flu to finish the story. (Surprise! Writing a book in a week does not work unless you are Stephen King.)
I kept working with JOY!!! but as time went on, I became aware of my own weaknesses. I didn't know how to structure a plot or build a character. I just wrote. I could (and still can) spin out pages and pages without ever creating a story. (The best critique I ever got was "You write very well but you aren't saying anything.") Eventually I found my way to the Vermont College MFA program, and learned how to do those things. As I became focused on craft and pace and technique, I didn't always write with JOY!!! Sometimes I was just slogging from one plot point to the next. I forgot about Brenda.
But you know what? In the end, Brenda was absolutely right. My first sold book was one I wrote with great passion (and a Diet Coke and Jim Beam!)in two hours without thinking of an audience. I never remotely considered submitting to a publisher, because I didn't "know how" to write a picture book. I wrote it only to cheer up my three-year old daughter. She could've cared less. That book was My Best Friend.
That manuscript would never have left my desk if circumstances hadn't interfered to prevent me writing anything else for two months. I needed to something to send in as part of my semester's work for Vermont. So I sent the picture I didn't know how to write. I was not surprised when no one in my critique group had anything good to say about it...except the moderator, the great Eric Kimmel. He thought I should "send it somewhere." I was deliriously happy because in a full year into the program no one had so much as hinted that I had written anything worth publishing. After 27 rejections, it found a home with Viking, the last publisher on my alphabetical list. Twenty years later, it is still in print. I discovered last month that the school system where my daughter teaches, gave every K-2 classroom a copy of My Best Friend. That's a lot of book sales!
My most successful books have been ones that I wrote for myself (or my daughter) without considering whether they were topical or part of a curriculum. They were fun. I wrote with JOY!!!
I remembered all this when I found So You Want to Write on my bookshelf. It's been awhile since I've written with joy and abandon and without looking over my shoulder. JOY!!! has been absent from my life for a considerable period of time. I'm writing on an otherwise extremely stressful day, but for the hour in which I created this post, it was absolutely with JOY!!!
Thank you, Brenda Ueland!
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
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