Rating: 
Summary: Essential for Beginners!..........
Review: ......Dorothea Brande offers practical advice on how to develop the artist and critic/craftsperson in you as you proceed on the path of becoming a writer! She shows you how to tap your unconscious and offer your entire self to the effort, while exerting conscious control over the materials that flow forth. She offers extensive explanations of why this is so important and presents exercises to help accomplish the goal (such as by keeping a log of your dreams) of developing these two aspects of the writer's personality.Brande also helps new writers assess their level of discipline and willingness to commit to writing. The exercises are helpful because if a new writer finds him/herself repeatedly unable to commit to writing tasks, it becomes clear that the desire to write is really too weak. This is really just to assist writers in their analyses of themselves as writers though. Never does Brande argue that certain people should not be writers or that some should just quit. Brande's advice is inspirational for a variety of reasons: she shows writers how to be their own critics and encourages originality, she gives effective techniques for deriving more from one's reading and shows how that helps one's writing. She teaches writer's how to trust themselves. Lastly, she shows us how to tap the third aspect of the writer's personality which she terms "genius", or our insights, intuitions and imagination. This is where I truly feel Brande celebrates our deepest need as writers to put pencil to paper and express ourselves through words. She honestly gives credit to the efforts of writers. Overall, I'd say that I'd particularly recommend this book to writers who are having trouble tapping themselves for resources and materials to write about. The book helped me a great deal in this regard!
Rating:
Summary: What should I write about????
Review: A few of the reviews here are just sub mental. But anyway... MAYBE: You're enrolled in a creative writing course, and the teacher says "Write a five page story for next week about the wind." You go home, look at that blank white page, say "The wind?!?", and freeze up. OR: You want desperately to write a screenplay, you can sort of intuitively feel the final movie-going experience in your mind - the high passion, the breathless action, the laughter, the tears - but no sooner do you type "FADE IN", than it all goes blank. OR: The boss wants a report a month from now, but you know you can only write when you have a deadline looming, so you wait until the last minute and hope that stress and coffee can succeed where self-discipline failed. You need Becoming A Writer, the best book on the writer's creative process I've ever read. It should be the foundational book in your library, and the first thing you read starting out in the writing game. Gather up all your other books on technique and structure and character and prose - and I know you've got some, don't lie - put 'em up on the shelf for a while, and read this one first. Her technique consists of two writing sessions a day. Now, I know what you're saying: "Twice a day! I haven't got time for twice a month!" Take it easy. Two BRIEF sessions a day, even as little as fifteen minutes each. You can find the time. You write once in the morning - pre-coffee - to let your creative subconscious take flight unhindered. Then you write again later, at a specified time, to learn discipline. Thus both sides of the writer's personality, creativity and discipline, are trained first in isolation and then - and this is where it gets interesting - then they are gradually and carefully brought together, until you can pour out good writing like fine booze, any place, any time. Consult Ms. Brande's book for details. She also gives awareness exercises, techniques for "reverse engineering" the work of authors you admire, hints for catching the telling detail, and a thousand other tips for getting it out of your head and down onto the page where it belongs. The other popular creativity books for writers are Writing The Natural Way by Rico, and Double Your Creative Power by Steibel. I've been through them all, and can confidently say that of the three Brande's book is the shortest, the simplest, the cheapest, the most concise, the friendliest, the easiest to understand, the best written, and the most effective. If I were you, I'd buy it. (By the way, if you're looking for a good one-stop volume on "classical" narrative technique, check out Jack Bickham's Writing And Selling Your Novel.)
Rating:
Summary: What should I write about????
Review: A few of the reviews here are just sub mental. But anyway... MAYBE: You're enrolled in a creative writing course, and the teacher says "Write a five page story for next week about the wind." You go home, look at that blank white page, say "The wind?!?", and freeze up. OR: You want desperately to write a screenplay, you can sort of intuitively feel the final movie-going experience in your mind - the high passion, the breathless action, the laughter, the tears - but no sooner do you type "FADE IN", than it all goes blank. OR: The boss wants a report a month from now, but you know you can only write when you have a deadline looming, so you wait until the last minute and hope that stress and coffee can succeed where self-discipline failed. You need Becoming A Writer, the best book on the writer's creative process I've ever read. It should be the foundational book in your library, and the first thing you read starting out in the writing game. Gather up all your other books on technique and structure and character and prose - and I know you've got some, don't lie - put 'em up on the shelf for a while, and read this one first. Her technique consists of two writing sessions a day. Now, I know what you're saying: "Twice a day! I haven't got time for twice a month!" Take it easy. Two BRIEF sessions a day, even as little as fifteen minutes each. You can find the time. You write once in the morning - pre-coffee - to let your creative subconscious take flight unhindered. Then you write again later, at a specified time, to learn discipline. Thus both sides of the writer's personality, creativity and discipline, are trained first in isolation and then - and this is where it gets interesting - then they are gradually and carefully brought together, until you can pour out good writing like fine booze, any place, any time. Consult Ms. Brande's book for details. She also gives awareness exercises, techniques for "reverse engineering" the work of authors you admire, hints for catching the telling detail, and a thousand other tips for getting it out of your head and down onto the page where it belongs. The other popular creativity books for writers are Writing The Natural Way by Rico, and Double Your Creative Power by Steibel. I've been through them all, and can confidently say that of the three Brande's book is the shortest, the simplest, the cheapest, the most concise, the friendliest, the easiest to understand, the best written, and the most effective. If I were you, I'd buy it. (By the way, if you're looking for a good one-stop volume on "classical" narrative technique, check out Jack Bickham's Writing And Selling Your Novel.)
Rating:
Summary: A Block-Buster
Review: Any writer facing writer's block needs this book to get on with the work. Dorothea Brande delivers the tools to bust through the blockages and get you back to productive, creative work again. It is a blessing -- clear, simple and most important, understandable.
Rating: 
Summary: A great blast from the past!
Review: Becoming a Writer is a reprint from a book originally published in 1934. However, I have found the advice to be timeless and in keeping with that given by modern writers such as Stephen King and Natalie Goldberg. Dorothea Brande writes in clear, concise terms what is needed to become a writer, and like the others, she advises that hard work is what will in the end, be a necessary ingredient. Especially if we are to be conscious competents. I found the chapters on reading as a writer most helpful as I do so much reading and therefore wish to learn as much as I can while doing so. And I was most amazed at the insight that Ms. Brande had with respect to how the mind works. She seems to be well ahead of her times, and I'm not so sure that many would find fault with her take on how genius or "empty mind" is to be encouraged and enhanced. In short, this book is well worth the read and should be on any aspiring writer's shelf. I give it a three out of five rating (and then only because there are more current volumes that provide this information). I am pleased to have spent the time reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: the key to the writer's magic.
Review: Becoming a Writer is unlike any other writing book on the market today. As Brande says in the introduction, even then, back in 1934, there were several books on writing, and most of them are about the basic riles of storytelling, organisational problems, and so on. This book is different. You will find nothing about plot, dialogue, structure, beginnings, endings here. Nothing about the actual nuts and bolts of writing.
Brande is trying to reach the writer who is not yet sure he/she is a writer. The shy, insecure artist who believes that somehow there is a magic to writing, a magic that other, successful writers have and which has somehow eluded him. And who desperately longs to find a key to that magic.
This book provides that key.
Brande goes on to talk about the artistic temperament, and th eneed to cultivate spontaneity, and innocence of eye, as well as the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new, and to see "traits and characteristics as though each were new-minted from the hand of God". Stories, Brande says, are formed in the unconscious mind, which must flow freely and richly, bringing at demand all the" treasures of memory, all the emotions, scenes, incidents, intimations of character and relationship" which is stored away beyond our awareness.
This book is about tapping that rich store in the unconscious mind. These days there are all kinds of workshops and books about creativity, tapping the unconscious, using meditation to reach the inner artist, and so on. In fact, any writer who has dabbled a little bit in the so-called "spiritual arts" would be capable of putting together a how-to treatise on writing, painting, dancing, or any other form of creativity, a how-to-do book on writing just by filling it with Buddhist sound-bites.
The thing about Brande is that she said it first, and said it best. This book is pioneer work; in 1934 George Harrison had not yet gone to India to set off the boom in meditation, and we were not yet informed on the validity of "right-brained" thinking.
She then goes on to talk about the interplay between the unconscious and the conscious mind, for the latter does have a role to play in he process or writing. The unconscious, says Brande, is shy, elusive, and unwieldy, but it is possible to learn to tap it at will, and even to direct it. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is meddlesome, opinionated, and arrogant, but it can be made subservient to the inborn talent through training. What wonderful, inspiring words! What courage they installed in me, when I first read them!
The rest of the book tells us how, exactly, to tap the wealth of the unconscious mind. She provides exercises and practical examples of what can be done to get the those buried stories richly flowing. She plants that seed of knowledge in your soul which will tell you "This is it", and will catapult you - as if by magic! - out of the slough of despond and into the actual work of a writer.
I read this book in 1981, at a time when I never dared dream of writing a complete novel. Immediately after reading it I began the exercises. They helped. Then I began to write my first novel. What more can I say, except that Brande's advice works. I now have two published novels and a third one under contract, what better recommendation can I give?
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books on Creativity and Writing
Review: Brande's simple book, written well before these days of business creativity books, drawing on the right side of the brain, etc., is one of the most clear, concise, compelling books about writing that I have ever read. As a full time writer, I use her words of wisdom often. No nonsense. No pop-psychology. Just good, well written advice for anyone who is serious about creativity in their lives.
Rating:
Summary: Always Remembered
Review: Brande's timeless classic is the mother of writer's inspirational books and still in print. I swear other writers steal from her exercises to fill their writing books. Brande covers nearly every tangible aspect to the writing life - working, creating time, friends, trusted readers, finding good books, etc. This advice echoes through the journals and diaries of authors small and large. (I'm not kidding. Check how many times this is mentioned in the National Archives of our most beloved authors.) In the early 1900's when this book was first released, writing was modern and reaching new heights. The fact that this book could be put in a contemporary cover and sold as new is a testament to its validity.
Rating: 
Summary: Constructive Criticism
Review: Every aspiring writer likes to receive confirmation they have the "genius" and "temperament" of a writer. Dorothea Brande, a person ahead of her time in her teaching ideas, delivers this in this book. More important, her book offers vital clues on creative and personal road blocks and how to overcome them. This book is an easy read, and a worthwhile one.
Rating:
Summary: Stepping into a Wise Elder's Presence.....
Review: I adore this book - it was like going to my favorite elderly neighbor's house for a cup of tea and finding out all her best secrets about her area of giftedness.
The language Miss Brande uses is reflective of her time - she uses phrases I would never think to use... and I delighted in each turn of the letter, each loving bit of guidance and suggestion.
"Becoming a Writer" reminded me of "So You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland, though this book feels more structured to me and less conversational. Her ideas are echoed in the modern works of writers such as Julia Cameron.
She offers many exercises and manners of stretching yourself as a writer, offered to make your uniqueness more pronounced and aid in your quest to do exactly what the title says, become a writer.
Her concluding chapter: "In conclusion: Some Prosaic Pointers" is flawless and timeless, even as it speaks of the necessity for two typewriters (substitute computers).
I am so glad I finally read this book, one I had heard referred to for such a long time. It is truly a classic to be loved, to be returned to, and to be treasured for all times.
| 
