Book review: If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland (1938)

My copy of If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland, first published in 1938. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Brenda Ueland was a Minnesotan author who published two books during her lifetime: Me: A Memoir, in 1939, and If You Want to Write in 1938. Ueland’s mother was Clara Ueland, a suffragette leader. I took a class in high school about Minnesota history, and we read a biography of Clara Ueland, Gentle Warriors: Clara Ueland and the Minnesota Struggle for Woman Suffrage, by Barbara Stuhler. We also took a field trip to visit the Ueland’s home, which still stands near Lake Harriet and Bde Maka Ska. As I was reading If You Want to Write I looked up Brenda Ueland, as I wondered if she was related to Clara Ueland. And then I had one of those fun moments where the circle connects.  

If You Want to Write has been recommended by authors I respect, and I found it to be a fascinating read. It ended up being a good contrast to the macho sensibility of The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield, which I read in December.  

Ueland’s thesis is that we all can create. The title of the first chapter is “Everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say.” I love that title, and I firmly agree with it. Ueland taught writing classes for many years, and she sprinkles the book with stories and examples from her classes.  

A quote that stood out to me was this one: “Inspiration does not come like a bolt...but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing.” (p.49) It’s so important to remember that inspiration will come if you give it a chance, but it may not strike like that proverbial bolt of lightning, or a light bulb over your head.  

Ueland’s stories of students in her class finding their voices are inspiring. They are a useful lesson to remember that you have to find your own voice in writing, you cannot simply imitate someone else’s voice and style and subject matter. Of course, that’s easier said than done.  

But I do have to quibble with Ueland on a few points in her book. She gives us a few excerpts from her student Sarah McShane’s writing. Ueland then compares McShane’s writing to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. “The writing is different from Sarah McShane’s but it is no better, no more convincing or alive. It has more vocabulary. But as a matter of fact my compassion for the people in it does not seem to turn over at all.” (p.78) Ueland admits that she might be biased in favor of her student. And there are many novels from 1937 that she could have picked to compare her student’s work to that no one would think twice about. Had she claimed Sarah McShane’s writing was as good as James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy, no one in 2025 would bat an eye. But Ueland had the misfortune to choose Of Mice and Men, which has become a revered classic, read by generations of students.  

Ueland really lost me with this sentence: “Tolstoy, Ibsen, Blake, Goethe, Thomas Mann and all great men, known or unknown, famous or obscure—they are great men in the first place and so they cannot say anything that is not important, not a single word.” (p.130) Okay, I get that it was 1938 and the “Great Man” theory of history was very prevalent. But still, this is just ridiculous. It’s useless to worship idols so completely. You will like some things an author writes, and some things they write you won’t like. You don’t have to take every word as though it was a drop of gold from the hand of a master. Writers are human. Their output will vary.  

I’m a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I am under no illusion that every single word he wrote was brilliant. Fitzgerald wrote almost 200 short stories. Needless to say, they vary greatly in quality. What I like to say about Fitzgerald is that even in his worst short stories, there are still two or three sentences that will take your breath away. For me, that’s a more useful measurement of artistic achievement than just saying “Everything he wrote was great. End of discussion.”  

What if someone asked me which Tom Wolfe book I would recommend to them? It wouldn’t be very useful if I said to them “Everything he wrote was perfect, start anywhere.” Wolfe’s books covered a wide range of the American experience—if the person was more inclined to non-fiction, I’d recommend The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or The Right Stuff. If they wanted a novel, I’d say The Bonfire of the Vanities.  

Sometimes it’s more valuable to think about what doesn’t work about a novel, short story, play, or film than what does work. I’m not advocating for being critical just for the sake of being critical, but there are times when it’s useful to say, “This didn’t quite work for me, for the following reasons.”  

Those are small quibbles compared to the value of If You Want to Write as a whole. If you’re interested in the creative process, or writing specifically, it’s a useful book. And it’s pretty amazing how well it holds up, 87 years after it was published.  

As I was reading If You Want to Write, I reflected on how lucky I am to have an outlet for my writing. If I was one of Brenda Ueland’s students taking her writing class in 1938, what would I have done with my writings? Sent them off to various magazines in the vain hope that they might accept something? I suppose so. I’m grateful that I’m able to just click a few buttons and poof, my thoughts are out there for the world to read. I’m not under any illusions that I’m reaching a huge mass audience with my book reviews and articles, but it is very gratifying to me to just have my writings out there where they might find an audience. Thinking about this made me happy to live in the modern world.