Writing with JOY!!! by Mary Ann Rodman

    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.

Brenda Ueland, late in life.

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

But Ya Gotta Have Friends! (Sorry, Bette Midler!)

January 1st means a fresh start, new resolutions for many people. The Gregorian calendar insists the New Year comes in the middle of grey, grisly, winter, with short days and long dreary nights. I think that's a mean joke. The last thing I want to do this time of year is make resolutions or "move ahead" on a project.

So what do I do to jolt myself out of the midwinter blahs? I talk to my friends As I've mentioned before, some of my best friends are books. I consult my "writers on writing" shelf.

The first book I read about writing was Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit.  Ueland is the friend you talk to when you fall in love with writing, because she's in love with it too.  She gets it. If You Want to Write was published in 1938, but so timeless in style and advice, it could've been written last week. She believes that everyone is talented, original and has something important to say...just what a new writer wants to hear! "Try to discover your true, honest untheoretical self," says Brenda. Wow! Somebody wants to hear from the "real me"? All right!

How can you not love a book with chapters titled "The imagination works slow and quietly," and"Be careless, be reckless! Be a lion, be a pirate when you write." Then there is my favorite "Why Women who do too much housework should neglect it for their writing." (Not a problem, Brenda!) I've written journals off and on since third grade, but when I read So You Want to Write in my 20's, I was encouraged to "Keep a slovenly, headlong, impulsive, honest diary." Ueland set me free to write and write and write without fretting over what I was writing, or what it might be some day. She turned me into an enthusiastic observer and journal keeper. I re-read So You Want to Write when I need to fall in love with writing again. (Sidebar--Greywolf Press brought the book back into print in 1983...and it has not been out of print since. That should speak to the quality of Ueland's advice.)

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird came into my life when I was trying to turn all that journal writing into actual stories...and having serious doubts that I could do it. Anne Lamott is the big sister friend, who has been there, done that and is going to tell you Get over yourself! Don't listen to your inner voice screaming, Who told you you are a writer.?You stink! Don't freak out. Take deep breaths. You can only write one sentence at a time, word by word. (Or bird by bird, as per the title.) Whatever writer's block you have, or how horribly you judge your own work...Anne Lamott has already done it, much, much  worse! (If you need a visual, think of Cher in Moonstruck, slapping Nick Cage and yelling "Snap out of it!") When I'm overthinking or hypercritical to the point of inertia, I pour a glass of wine and spend a little time with Anne.

After decades of plugging away, I began to publish. However, the myth that "once you get your first book published, the next one is easier" is just that. A myth. I sold my first book. The next one took four years. (Although in the wild and wacky world of publishing schedules, the second book came out before the first one!) I didn't have an agent. In fact, I was discovering that getting an agent was harder than getting an editor's attention.I was sure that J.K Rowling and Stephen King were not having my problems with a-hiccuping career. That's when I happened on Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. 

Personally, I'm not a fan of King's stories or style. However, I am in awe of how he has made readers out of people who don't like to read. I read On Writing, hoping he had some sort of magic formula. Of course he doesn't. However I discovered has a lovely conversational style when writing about his own life...and not homicidal Plymouth Furys or evil, sewer-dwelling clowns.

 King takes the "toolbox" approach to writing. If you don't possess and use these tools, you will never become a competent writer. His first tool: read a lot and write a lot. I'd been telling my own writing students that for years. I didn't know whether to be disappointed that his advice wasn't more exotic, or pleased that Stephen and I were on the same page, philosophically speaking. I didn't tell my students that by "writing a lot," King means that he writes every single day. That's a discouraging notion to a ten-year-old whose life is already scheduled to the gills.(He once told an interviewer that he wrote everyday except Fourth of July, Christmas and his birthday--but that wasn't true. He writes every day.) I also write every day, although not necessarily of the journaling-and-writing-project variety. I'm a moderator of a Facebook (OK Meta!) page that involves a lot of research and concise explanatory writing. This keeps my toolbox working between projects, and through the spells when my imagination seems to have dried up and blown away. (I tell my students to write on weekends and school holidays...and whenever they are happy or sad or mad. That winds up being pretty much every day...without them knowing it.)

The other "tools" King uses are so basic, I'm a little insulted he calls them tools; vocabulary and grammar. Vocabulary doesn't need to be voluminous (The last time I was required to know and use the word "salubrious" was in taking the ACT.),  varied and useful. If you get stuck, he suggests a thesaurus, preferably not the one that came with your word processing program. For grammar, nothing can beat our mutual old friend, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.  While King never does tells how he can turn out bestseller after bestseller, he does remind me that if you don't read, write, mind your vocabulary and grammar, you're never going to write anything. On Writing is that professor you regard with awe, but when you actually talk to them, find they aren't magical or mystical...just hardworking and focused. 

My last friend is my teacher friend, Ralph Fletcher. (I don't personally know Mr. Fletcher, but after reading everyone of his many books, I feel as if I do.) I rely on Fletcher to inspire me as a teacher.  He is a master teacher of writing as well as a writer for children. He knows how kids think, and how to jazz their imaginations, free them of their writing hang-ups. His books contain writing exercises and topics (he doesn't use the word "prompts") for every age group--including adults. I've never taught a class without Ralph Fletcher at my side, in spirit. 

No one gets through this writing life alone. As the great Bette Midler sings "'cause yah got to have friends." Please feel free to introduce me to some of your writing friends. 

Posted by Mary Ann. Rodman