Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.

who can bear to look at the junk of our own minds that comes out in writing practice?

Not commenting on another person’s work builds up a healthy desire to speak. You can pour that energy into your next round of writing. Write, read, write, read. It is an excellent way to cut through the internal censor and to give yourself tremendous space to write whatever’s on your mind.

We think our words are permanent and solid and stamp us forever. That’s not true.

Use loneliness. Its ache creates urgency to reconnect with the world. Take that aching and use it to propel you deeper into your need for expression—to speak, to say who you are and how you care about light and rooms and lullabies.

If you are a writer when writing, you also are a writer when you are cooking, sleeping, walking. And if you are a mother, a painter, a horse, a giraffe, or a carpenter, you will bring that into your writing, too. It comes with you. You can’t divorce yourself from parts of yourself.

It is important to remember we are not the poem.

in a novel, place is the third character. It’s palpable in really good novels.

went home with the resolve to write what I knew and to trust my own thoughts and feelings and to not look outside myself. I was not in school anymore: I could say what I wanted.

“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.” And don’t worry too much about security. You will eventually have a deep security when you begin to do what you want.