Becoming a Writer

by Dorothea Brande

anyone can write.

writing can be both taught and learned.

Dorothea Brande (1893 – 1948) was an American writer

Becoming a Writer, published in 1934,

She also wrote Wake Up and Live, published in 1936,

It was made into the film Wake Up and...

arranged your affairs and your relations so that they help you instead of hinder you on your way toward the goal you have chosen,

it will teach the beginner not how to write, but how to be a writer;

CULTIVATING A WRITER’S TEMPERAMENT

books of popularized psychology;

When you have completed a fair first draft you can, if you like, offer it for criticism and advice; but to talk too early is a grave mistake.

formation of a new habit or the eradication of an old one

DISPLACING OLD HABITS

Old habits are strong and jealous. They will not be displaced easily if they get any warning that such plans are afoot; they will fight for their existence with subtlety and persuasiveness. If they are too radically attacked they will revenge themselves; you will find, after a day or two of extraordinarily virtuous effort, all sorts of reasons why the new method is not good for you, why you should alter it in line with this or that old habit, or actually abandon it entirely. In the end you will have had no good from the new advice; but you will almost certainly feel that you have given it a fair trail and that it has failed. Your mistake will have been that you tired yourself out and exhausted your good intentions

The best way to do this is to rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise. Just as soon as you can—and without talking, without reading the morning’s paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before—begin to write.

corrective reading

learn to read as a writer.

But to read effectively it is necessary to learn to consider a book in the light of what it can teach you about the improvement of your own work.

when you have learned to read critically you will find that your pleasure is far deeper than it was when you read as an amateur;

READ TWICE

the only way to read as a writer is to go over everything twice.