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 93 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 best-selling 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." Selling over 280,000 copies in paperback, we are pleased to reissue If You Want to Write with a new introduction.
"I was with Ueland right up to the end and wanted to shout, 'Amen.'"—Andrei Codrescu, NPR
"I only have to read a few sentences and I am infected with the desire to follow her."—Women's Review of Books