Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

by Natalie Goldberg

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

Don’t be abstract. Write the real stuff. Be honest and detailed.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT your talent or capability: that will grow as you practice.

Don’t identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you.

There is no separation between writing, life, and the mind. If you think big enough to let people eat cars, you will be able to see that ants are elephants and men are women. You will be able to see the transparency of all forms so that all separations disappear.

Don’t hold too tight; allow it to come out how it needs to rather than trying to control it.

If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else.

A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.

Don’t tell readers what to feel. Show them the situation, and that feeling will awaken in them.

We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don’t have our own style. Don’t worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing.

there is no perfection.

For every book that makes it, there are probably thousands that don’t even get published. We must continue anyway. If you want to write, write. If one book doesn’t get published, write another one. Each one will get better because you have all the more practice behind you.

You should listen to what people say. Take in what they say. (Don’t build a steel box around yourself.) Then make your own decision.

Poetry is the carrier of life, the vessel of vitality. Each line should be alive. Keep those parts of a piece; get rid of the rest.

Be willing to look at your work honestly. If something works, it works. If it doesn’t, quit beating an old horse. Go on writing. Something else will come up. There’s enough bad writing in the world. Write one good line, you’ll be famous. Write a lot of lukewarm pieces, you’ll put people to sleep.

You are alone when you write a book. Accept that and take in any love and support that is given to you, but don’t have expectations of how it is supposed to be.