that kick my ass into gear and have me writing, STAT.
Part 1
In How To Write Your Your #@%*Book Already, I made mention of the genre known as the How To Write Books. Strangely, they are filed in the bookstore under “Reference”, along with the dictionaries and the thesauruses. As if how to write were merely a technical act, involving spelling, grammar, and…the mere mention of such mechanics makes my own eyes glaze over as I compose this.
We all know that writing is a creative act. And for an even stranger reason, creativity is often grouped in the Self-Help category. As if some greater power knows that creativity and the need for self-help do actually exist in the same aisle of our psyche, at least from time to time. OK. In my case, more often than not.
I love books. I am an avid (rabid?) consumer of books on all sorts of subjects. This makes my digitally nomadic life complicated. So over the years, I’ve significantly lightened up the collection. Circulating them back into the world via my Amazon seller account, library donations, and to good friends.
I have consumed many books about writing. In certain writing droughts, they are my binge of choice. Good thing they’re high-fiber and low-cal! Here are those who have made it through cut after cut of personal library downsizing. Many have been with me twenty years or more. (Easily qualifying among my longest relationships.)
They have helped me write better, and also feel better, about writing. I have found these two things are vital for creative health. So I guess I could consider them a part of my own self-help/creativity/reference section. Here is my list, along with select passages I have underlined, rendering them unsuitable for resale.
Henry Miller on Writing, edited by Thomas H. Moore (New Directions) 1964.
This volume is composed of excerpts from books, essays, and letters written by Henry Miller than are more, and sometimes a little less, about writing.
I happen to resonate with Miller’s writing in general. A lot of people don’t. But it’s worth a read simply to extract his philosophy about life as an artist, and how he struggled to find his own writing voice. Stories like that give me courage when I am sitting around feeling sorry for myself, i.e., not writing. Also, he’s not afraid of curse words.
“If you’re trying to improve you mind, stop it! There’s no improving the mind. Look to your heart and gizzard-the brain is in the heart.”
On writing his first book, which he did on a three week vacation from his job as a Western Union personnel manager in 1922, he says,
“I wrote straight off, five, seven, sometimes eight thousand words a day. I thought that a man, to be a writer, must do at least five thousand words a day. I thought he must say everything at once-all in one book-and collapse afterwards. I didn’t know a thing about writing. I was scared shitless.”
Hidden in the middle of the book is an entirely too brief 12-page section called The Writer at Work, which outlines Miller’s writing “commandments” and how he structured his day and projects. There are some of his hand-drawn mind maps, too. No roman number outlines for him. Snore.
Some of the commandments include:
- Work on one thing at a time until finished.
- When you can’t create, you can work.
- Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
- Writing first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland (The Schubert Club) 1938 (reissued in paperback by Putnam)
Consider: This was originally published in 1938 by a midwestern women in her 40’s, whose life’s work was writing and teaching writing. Yes, she lived it up a bit as a “bohemian” in Greenwich village for awhile. Then she went back to Minnesota and taught writing to “ordinary folks” at the local YMCA, as well as those in university.
Not just a great book about writing, this is one of the best books out there on nurturing the creative process. What do you think/feel when you read this opening chapter title?
Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.
I don’t know about you, but I breathe a big sigh of relief. So do my clients, when I share this quote with them. It’s a very strong basis for moving ahead with any creative act. Typically, we think the exact opposite, especially about our own work. But since we can think whatever we want, why not try on some thoughts that put the creative imagination at ease?
Her writing process of non-judgmental, encouraging, first-draft blurts has inspired many a writing teacher, including me. You can see the bones of her work and teaching style in other teachers of our time, including Pat Schneider, Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. Ueland coined the term “Microscopic Truthfulness” and all good writing teachers I know encourage this.
In fact, so many writers and teachers of creative process quote Ueland somewhere or another in their work, that her name may sound familiar to you. I recommend going back to the source, and drinking in her wisdom. On the creative process, she quotes amply from the work of William Blake and a who’s who of great Russian writers including Tolstoi, Chekhov and Dostoevsky-which may have the effect of you wanting to go back yet again to those sources for writing nourishment. It did for me.
“Gradually by writing you will learn more and more to be free, to say all you think; and at the same time you will learn never to lie to yourself, never to pretend and attitudinize. But only by writing and by long, patient, serious work will you find your true self.”
She footnotes this passage with:
Or by any other art; or by any use of the creative power. Remember always that by “creative power” I mean so much more that what the high-brows call Art.”
Yeah, sister!
For those of you who doubt the value of your daily (or regular) journaling, and/or wrestle against a tide of domestic responsibilities in addition to your day job, night job, volunteer work, exercise regime, and plan to save the world, you’ll find some good food for thought in these two chapters (whose titles are a tie for my personal favorite):
Why Women who do too much housework should neglect it for their writing.
Keep a slovenly, headlong, impulsive, honest diary
Which my crazy brain turns into this sort of equation: Slovenly, impulsive housekeeping + headlong, honest writing = happiness.
Or put this way: when I have the absolute burning desire to clean out the refrigerator, I know for certain that I am procrastinating on writing. Not that I don’t love a clean refrigerator. It’s all in the timing.
So I leave a note to myself in the fridge: I’ll be right here waiting for you when you get back from writing. Your reward: scour the crisper drawers within an inch of their life. Weird? Yeah. But it gets me out of the kitchen and onward to writing.
Back to what Brenda says to this conundrum:
“…to the worn and hectored mothers in the class who longed to write and could find not a minute for it:
If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: ‘Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!’ you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.
They look at me wistfully and know it is true. But after all these centuries of belief that women should be only encourages and fosterers of talent in others, and have none of their own (as though you can effectively foster or encourage other people’s talent unless you have a great deal of your own!) it is hard to do.”
I’m curious, who else out there has read these books on writing and found them helpful (or not)? What are you best, all-time favorite books on writing? Hey, I may not have found them yet. I haven’t felt the need to stock up in this genre for the past 10 years or so.
Note: Due to the length of this post after just two entries, I’m breaking this up into some smaller chunks. I’m thinking it will be in three parts altogether. I’ll keep you “posted”.
Look for the next installment on Monday.
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Howdy! I’m Lisa Sonora Beam, author of The Creative Entrepreneur. I teach people how to get unstuck and use their creativity to make a living doing what they love. 
