Brenda Ueland's Wings shop / Andrei Codescu--
Preface, 1983 / Brenda Ueland--
Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say--
"Imagination is the divine body in every man"--
William Blake--
Why a Renaissance nobleman wrote sonnets--
The imagination works slowly and quietly--
"Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires"- William Blake--
"Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive"- Alfred de Musset
Be careless, reckless! Be a lion, be a pirate, when you write--
Why you are not to be discouraged, annihilated, by rejection slips--
People confuse the human and the divine ego--
Why women who do too much house-work should neglect it for their writing--
Microscopic truthfulness--
Art is infection--
The third dimension--
Keep a slovenly, headlong, impulsive, honest diary--
You do not know what is in you--
an inexhaustible fountain of ideas--
On using the imagination--
"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction"- William Blake--
"He whose face gives no light shall never become a star"--
William Blake.

For most, the hardest part of writing is overcoming the mountain of self-denial that weighs upon the spirit, always threatening to extinguish those first small embers of ambition. Brenda Ueland, a writer and teacher, devotes most of her book--published back in 1938, before everyone and their goldfish got their MFA's in creative writing--to these matters of the writer's heart. Still, the real gift of the book is Ueland herself: She liked to write, she didn't care what anyone thought, and she had a great sense of humor. You're simply happy to hang out with her.