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Brenda Ueland Quotes

Brenda Ueland quotes about writing

American Writer October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985

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Quotes

The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is:"Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out."And if you have no such friend,--and you want to write,--well, then you must imagine one. Brenda Ueland
We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first? at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom. Brenda Ueland
In the same way there is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent, imaginative, sympathetic people who love us and have the magnanimity to encourage us, to believe in us, by listening, by praise, by appreciation, by laughing. If you are going to write, you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently with with self-trust. Once you... Brenda Ueland
If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude. Brenda Ueland
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. Brenda Ueland
No writing is a waste of time? no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. 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. The thing to say to such people is: "See how *bad* a story you can write. See how dull you can be. Go ahead. That would be fun and interesting. I will give you ten dollars if you can write something thoroughly dull from beginning to end!" And of course, no one can. Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland quote: "at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to..."
...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Brenda Ueland
The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing. Brenda Ueland
Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing. Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland quote: "...writing is not a performance but a generosity."
...writing is not a performance but a generosity. Brenda Ueland

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