If You Want to Write by Ueland Brenda

Author:Ueland, Brenda [Ueland, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Wilder Publications
Published: 2010-01-14T22:00:00+00:00

Microscopic Truthfulness

Yes, when you get down to the True Self and speak from that, there is always a metamorphosis in your writing, a transfiguration. Now I will suggest another way to find your True self. It is what I call writing with "microscopic truthfulness." You might try it if you think you need it.

One of the class was Mrs. B. She had written for many years. She had written a novel (which she had not sold) and many stories. She had truly worked. She was an interesting and competent person, although something about the rather severe, rational, get-down-to-business look through her pince-nez made me feel that it might be a little hard to do much for her. She had taken writing courses and rewritten her "stuff" dozens of times and studied tendencies in magazines and new books and made notes of them and rewritten her novel again in accordance with these tendencies.

I find that I wrote this about her in a letter two years ago.

My class has started. Timid; all ages. They have turned in some very good things though. In fact it seems to me the only untalented one is a Mrs. B. who has written novels and all kinds of things. But I may be too hard on her. She wants "stiff criticism," she says, and will not be contented unless I am hard on them (which I don't believe in being). Yet she writes herself so externally; "he gripped the chair," etc., etc. And when I tell her to make a point in a story clearer, she wants to know just what to put in it. I tell her that that is her trouble; she thinks of the words and not of the story, of the reality of what happened. It does no good to make the words try to sound better, snappier; one must have a clearer idea of the people and what happened to them. I am eager to see if this changes her work. I have decided that is why all (except great) fiction is so false, has that queer, bogus sound. "Nancy Flimsy madly swinging her sun hat flew down on the yacht club pier!" But the prominent writers have the same sound in their fiction too, Galsworthy, etc.--all, it seems to me, but the great Russians.

I tell Mrs. B. and all of them to think of telling a story, not of writing it. When you tell a story then you have the instinctive sense of timing in it, of going into detail where it is important, of moving fast over the surface of the story where that is necessary. No longer the labored dialogue. Well, I talk as though I knew all about it, when I don't and have really just begun, and my own stories have never been much good, God knoweth. But I think I learn more all the time. In writing one must be bold, free, and truthful. Being truthful keeps one from the boldness that means showing off (how many Americans do this!).

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