"Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing"
About this Quote
There is a particular kind of stubbornness in Ueland's vow: the kind that refuses to let the marketplace referee the value of a life. By stripping away the two carrots that usually justify creative labor - publication and money - she forces the reader to confront writing as something closer to appetite than ambition. Not a career move, not a brand, but a compulsion that would keep pulsing even if no one clapped.
The intent is both personal and tactical. Ueland isn't romanticizing poverty; she's trying to quarantine the act of writing from the anxieties that poison it. Publication becomes a weather system you can't control. Money becomes a noisy metronome that throws off your rhythm. Her subtext: if your practice depends on external reward, you don't really have a practice - you have a negotiation. She's drawing a hard line between work that serves the self (clarity, discovery, attention) and work that performs for gatekeepers.
The context matters: Ueland lived through a century when women were routinely told their seriousness was presumptuous and their art was hobby. Her insistence reads as defiance as much as devotion. It's also an early argument against the modern content treadmill, where "making it" is measured in metrics and monetization. Ueland's sentence is a small manifesto for intrinsic motivation, but it carries a sharper edge: write anyway, because the self you become by writing is worth more than the approval you might never get.
The intent is both personal and tactical. Ueland isn't romanticizing poverty; she's trying to quarantine the act of writing from the anxieties that poison it. Publication becomes a weather system you can't control. Money becomes a noisy metronome that throws off your rhythm. Her subtext: if your practice depends on external reward, you don't really have a practice - you have a negotiation. She's drawing a hard line between work that serves the self (clarity, discovery, attention) and work that performs for gatekeepers.
The context matters: Ueland lived through a century when women were routinely told their seriousness was presumptuous and their art was hobby. Her insistence reads as defiance as much as devotion. It's also an early argument against the modern content treadmill, where "making it" is measured in metrics and monetization. Ueland's sentence is a small manifesto for intrinsic motivation, but it carries a sharper edge: write anyway, because the self you become by writing is worth more than the approval you might never get.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit — contains the passage expressing that she would keep writing even if never published or paid again (commonly cited in this book). |
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