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Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
say.” It is a good idea to have a page in your notebook where you jot down, as they come to you, ideas of topics to write about.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
It is true that when we begin anything new, resistances fly in our face. Now you have the opportunity to not run or be tossed away, but to look at them black and white on paper and see what their silly voices say.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
When you begin to write this way—right out of your own mind—you might have to be willing to write junk for five years, because we have accumulated it over many more than that and have been gladly avoiding it in ourselves. We have to look at our own inertia, insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable to say.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
do!” She said the main thing she saw in the notebooks—whole notebooks of complaints, boring description, and flagrant anger—was an absolute trust in the process.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and nonaggressive.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
That is the discipline: to continue to sit.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
The device is called “wraparound.” You can rap nonstop.
Natalie Goldberg • Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Write. Trust yourself. Learn your own needs.