Thursday 23 December 2010

9 days. "Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.”


This is one of my heroes, Brenda Ueland. She wrote the cult book about writing - If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit. Brenda believed that "Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable", and "Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.”

She believed in the importance of moodling for all creative people, and she believed we should approach our creative tasks without egotism and without fear of failure. She said a lot of very sensible and fiercely encouraging things.

I'd like to offer a little of the spirit of Brenda today, to those riverofstone participants who haven't been writing for very long, and who feel all wobbly like a just-born calf. It's perfectly normal. Writing does that to you.

We must learn to write through it - the times we feel we'll never write anything worth reading, or that we don't have anything exciting to say. Remember what Brenda said. "Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” That means you.

Keep your gorgeous small stones coming. We're so enjoying reading them.

6 comments:

  1. Often it isn't what you write - it's the act of writing. For me it's the same with painting - the end result could go in the bin or on the wall. It is the physical act of moving the paint around; the purity of colour and the alchemy of the mix (whether to a whole different colour or a gradual mix of sludge). If you watch a small child make words or pictures just for the sake of it - then that's the thing to aim for I think (and it's what I aspire to!). Did that make sense?

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  2. PERFECT sense. And Brenda would absolutely agree.

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  3. Brenda Ueland sounds like such a wonderful lady - I wish she was still here - but then I suppose she still is through her writing. I have the book you mentioned on my wishlist now. I loved this quote:

    "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."

    Isn't that lovely !

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  4. Me too, E. She was quite a character...

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  5. I bought this book today for my Christmas Kindle!

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