Our Writing is Our Gift

As I read Brenda Ueland’s book on writing from 1938 titled If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit, I highlight any passages that strike me as unique and true advice.

I could highlight the entire book. It’s wonderful.

My latest little find is Ueland using a letter from van Gogh to his brother to define the nature of art and how we must view our role and creativity within it:

“He sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lamppost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: “It is so beautiful I must show you how it looks.” And then on his cheap ruled notepaper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. When I read this letter of van Gogh’s it comforted me very much and seemed to throw clear light on the whole road of Art…

“It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it…

“I want to show you that what he had in him is just what you all have in yourselves and should let out. For I must remind you again and again that that is the whole purpose of this book…

“...van Gogh’s simple impulse is in all of us. But in us it is clouded over and confused with notions such as: will the work be good or bad? or would it be Art? or would it be modernistic enough and not academical? and would it sell? would it be economically sound to put the time in trying to do it?

“… it has made me like working to see that writing is not a performance but a generosity.”