If You Want to Write

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was just in time to get me inspired to write for NaNoWriMo. Once you get used to the footnotes (excessive), and the constant references to Blake and Van Gogh, there is a lot of inspirational advice in this book.

Synopsis: But we must try to find our True Conscience, our True Self, the very Center, for this is the only first-rate choice-making center. Here lies all originality, talent, honor, truthfulness, courage and cheerfulness. Here lies the ability to choose the good and the grand, the true and the beautiful.

In her ninety-three remarkable years, Brenda Ueland published six million words. She said she had two rules she followed absolutely: to tell the truth, and not to do anything she didn’t want to do. Her integrity shines throughout If You Want to Write, her bestselling classic on the process of writing that has already inspired
thousands to find their own creative center. Carl Sandburg called this book “the best book ever written about how to write.” Yet Ueland reminds us that “whenever I say ‘writing’ in this book, I also mean anything that you love and want to do or make.”