Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

by Natalie Goldberg

A cheap spiral notebook lets you feel that you can fill it quickly and afford another.

THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise. You may time yourself for ten minutes, twenty minutes, or an hour. It’s up to you.

It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.

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.

Let go of everything when you write, and try at a simple beginning with simple words to express what you have inside. It won’t begin smoothly. Allow yourself to be awkward. You are stripping yourself.

I have my writing groups make lists of their obsessions so that they can see what they unconsciously (and consciously) spend their waking hours thinking about. After you write them down you can put them to good use.

Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don’t think too much.

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

Writing is not psychology. We do not talk “about” feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader.

It is much better to say “the geranium in the window” than “the flower in the window.” “Geranium”—that one word gives us a much more specific picture. It penetrates more deeply into the beingness of that flower.

Original details are very ordinary, except to the mind that sees their extraordinariness.

So even though life is not always so clear, it is good to express yourself in clear, affirmative statements. “This is how I think and feel.” “This is who I am in this moment.” It takes practice, but it is very rewarding.

If you can write a question, you can answer it.

Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list at least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article.