READING Corita Kent’s rules made me think of another list of rules/reminders/admonitions that I have found helpful, this one drawn up by Brenda Ueland. Below is my copy, taped into an old journal — click to read:
BOTH Kent’s formulation and Ueland’s have that necessary quality of kicking one in the ass, making it clear that there’s no substitute for work. The genius of Brenda Ueland was that she took away any and all excuses a person might come up with to quit writing. If you end up quitting, she tells you gently, it can only be because you wanted to.
UNDERSTANDING this led me to another important realization. I have my whole life to write. If I work at it little by little, if I produce small things here and there, if I am constantly trying to sound notes more true, more sad, more beautiful… then, at the end of my life I will have been a writer. There is nothing more to it.
