I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six-mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.

And how do these creative thoughts come? They come in a slow way. It is the little bomb of revelation bursting inside of you. I found I never took a long, solitary walk without some of these silent, little inward bombs bursting quietly: “I see. I understand that now!” and a feeling of happiness.

But I had to have my walk, so I would get up at five and walk to the Mississippi River, about six miles, and then take the street car. This walking had become an obsession. My whole spiritual vigor depended on it. And I was stern about it, because if you skipped one day, it was easy to skip many. For about ten years or more, to start on a walk I needed always a fierce momentum of will, overcoming much reluctance. But at last it became easy.

I worked every morning for four hours and then, bare legged and exposed as much as possible, I walked or ran around the Point, perhaps six miles, in the rain and snow, or in the bright salt sunshine. For at this time, I was trying to make myself perfect, an athlete, a beauty, an acrobat (I was working on handsprings, which I have never perfected), and a scholar. And I was going to do it by my Will, which was nourished by a piecemeal reading of Nietzsche. And sometimes on my walk I would memorize Shakespeare and other poetry. I learned many long pages of Hamlet. This affected me and stimulated me very much. I always respond to the Renaissance idea of a fine, brave, proud human being, a swordsman and a poet at the same time.

Brenda Ueland