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jewelkr 's review for:
If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
by Brenda Ueland
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
I purchased this book in 1987 when the Quality Paperback Book Club offered it. My then lover and mentor ridiculed the title, even as they claimed to support my aspirations - and I didn't read it at the time or continue writing, but lugged it from one home after another until now - 2025 - when I felt I needed inspiration to write, finally, in my retirement. Because time has changed our world, this book needs to be read with a great deal of patience and tolerance.
I wish I had read it then, before mindfulness had taken over our lives in the past 20 years. It is amazing that she thought the way she did in 1938 - think pre-World War when Nazi Germany and all its dehumanizing restrictions on its own citizens were well established. In the current context, this type of open-hearted encouraging words are too much part of a society that is characterized by a lot of spiritual bypassing. I found it difficult not to dismiss what was truly out-of-the-box advice at the time because in the intervening eighty-plus years these thoughts have become internet slushies.
Add to that the religious overtone, the unfortunate focus on male artists only - Virginia Wolfe, George Eliot, Jane Austen do come to mind as writers who had something to say about writing - of course the use of the words he and him to include us all, and a belittling classism of the students described, and I found it a tough slug - but it was a different time and even in 1983 none of these things would have seemed problematic. Some things just don't stand the test of time and a new edition should be heavily edited.
I did make myself 10 notes of what is important when writing, and believe these will help keep me from writing the "wrong" way. I would like to have met her as a teacher when I needed encouragement and before the critical voices in my head - and my life - deterred me from something I really wanted to do.
I wish I had read it then, before mindfulness had taken over our lives in the past 20 years. It is amazing that she thought the way she did in 1938 - think pre-World War when Nazi Germany and all its dehumanizing restrictions on its own citizens were well established. In the current context, this type of open-hearted encouraging words are too much part of a society that is characterized by a lot of spiritual bypassing. I found it difficult not to dismiss what was truly out-of-the-box advice at the time because in the intervening eighty-plus years these thoughts have become internet slushies.
Add to that the religious overtone, the unfortunate focus on male artists only - Virginia Wolfe, George Eliot, Jane Austen do come to mind as writers who had something to say about writing - of course the use of the words he and him to include us all, and a belittling classism of the students described, and I found it a tough slug - but it was a different time and even in 1983 none of these things would have seemed problematic. Some things just don't stand the test of time and a new edition should be heavily edited.
I did make myself 10 notes of what is important when writing, and believe these will help keep me from writing the "wrong" way. I would like to have met her as a teacher when I needed encouragement and before the critical voices in my head - and my life - deterred me from something I really wanted to do.
Content Warnings
Minor: Ableism, Body shaming, Misogyny, Classism