I appreciated this list because, like the author, I find that any productivity strategy that works for me does not work forever — the work-avoidance part of my brain is far too clever for that.

This week, I’m recommending a book to all those tired and bedraggled writers who are now more than two-thirds of the way through National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). If you need balm for your weary souls, this is it: If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland. This book was first published in 1938, but is absolutely relevant today. The current publisher is Graywolf; I have their 1987 edition, but there is a 2007 edition with an introduction by Andrei Cordescu (which I haven’t seen).

Ueland taught creative writing at a YWCA in Minneapolis for several years, and also rubbed elbows with a bohemian New York City crowd that also included Eugene O’Neill. Carl Sandburg was a friend and, not given to half measures, he told her that “This is the best book ever written about how to write.”

Her first lesson is this: “everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.” Oh, a dewy idealist! the snarkier among us might say — but Ueland came to this conclusion after teaching writing at a YWCA for three years. So idealist she definitely is, but more of a hard-boiled one, if that’s possible.

Her whole purpose, I think, is to get the reader into the best possible mental state to write: fearless, honest, and optimistic. Someone who is already half-wincing, waiting for the blow of criticism to land, is not going to do the kind of fiercely original writing that Ueland (along with most readers, I think) hopes for.

“Though everybody is talented and original,” Ueland cautions, “often it does not break through for a long time. People are too scared, too self-conscious, too proud, too shy…. Another trouble with writers in the first twenty years, is an anxiety to be effective, to impress people. They write pretentiously. It is so hard not to do this. That was my trouble” (63). That’s the bad news: it takes work, a lot of it, for a long time, to “break through.” On the plus side, if you follow Ueland’s advice, it will be an adventure, not drudgery; the preceding quote came from her chapter, “Be Careless, Reckless! Be a Lion! Be a Pirate! When You Write.”

She has much to say, too, about the rest of life that intrudes on one’s creative endeavors, so for those who are continually battling guilt — thinking they aren’t living up to their various duties when they are writing, and thinking they are not living up to their art when they are being dutiful — this book is essential reading.

Find If You Want to Write at a nearby library or purchase it.

Mom laughed and said she remembered me sweating and staring at my own dreaded admissions form. That was in 1989, so it was a paper form — typed? handwritten? I have no idea, but I think I hand-wrote it — no internet, no web sites, no word processors (I had used a Mac IIe at my high school newspaper, but didn’t have one at home). Very old school.

Mom said I was driving her crazy because I just sat there, staring at the box where I was supposed to provide my answer. She thought I was merely freaking out (a reasonable suspicion, considering me at 17). Then, after the better part of an hour, I wrote the thing, in ink on the form. She read it and was amazed to see it had a beginning, middle and end, and precisely filled up the space available. “I would have written it out on a scrap piece of paper first,” she said. I shrugged. My process worked.

It was a timely reminder, because this month I’m writing two short stories, and have already spent half of the month working on…stuff…but not exactly writing drafts. I was wondering whether I should start to freak out (I’m still pretty talented at it), but after my chat with Mom, I said, “Oh yeah. Prewriting. That’s what I’m doing.”

That said, methinks it’s time for the drafting now(!). Otherwise, prewriting will have morphed into procrastination.

Also, this kind of thing works for me for short stories, but NOT for novels or screenplays. It’s just too hard to keep the whole thing in my head, especially with all the other stuff competing for brainspace. But keeping a scene in my head while I go for a walk or cook dinner is easy and helpful — I can smooth out the dialogue, ratchet up the conflict (or at least recognize that I need to ratchet it up), and flesh out the sensory details and blocking/action (who does what, when, and what are they doing while they are talking).

I’m a process junkie, and very interested in how other writers do what they do. Tuesday I’ll be talking about Negotiating with the Dead, which is Margaret Atwood’s very process-oriented book about writers and writing. Another good one for process is Stephen King’s On Writing (a book many writers swear by, including a  writer I spoke to recently who has a string of successful narrative nonfiction books to her credit) — you may hear more about that one later as well.

It could have been worse – I could have been re-reading The Standby Stephen King.

All this to say that I spent a good part of yesterday procrastinating on my writing by looking up food storage information and products on the web and internally debating the relative merits of single-burner, dual fuel camp stoves vs. butane or propane setups.

Can you tell I have a writing deadline looming on May 15?