Courage to Write

Gee, after you haven't posted for a while, it's hard to get back into it again.

I have been reading "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. I love what she has to say because she is not inhibited about being "correct" - her focus is on saying what is true for her, and encouraging others to write according to what is true for them.

She says, "Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his true self and not from the self he thinks he should have be. ... If you speak or write from yourself you cannot help being original."

These thoughts encourage me. They put courage into me - courage to try to speak up from my view of the world, a view which is hopeful rather than cynical, a view which leans more toward faith than to despair.

Ueland's book concludes with these thoughts: "And why should we all use our creative power and write or paint or play music, or whatever it tells us to do? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold, and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Because the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?"

So I will try to write at least one true thing every day, at least one thing that is beautiful, at least to me.