Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

by Natalie Goldberg

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.

There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

We have lived; our moments are important.

We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.

“Literature will tell you what life is, but it won’t tell you how to get out of it.”

In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not just staying in the heat of your own emotions.

You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.

Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you.

Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot.

i only do one.

Stay on the side of precision; know your goal and stay present with it. If your mind and writing wander from it, bring them gently back.

We want honest support and encouragement. When we receive it, we don’t believe it, but we are quick to accept criticism to reinforce our deepest beliefs that, in truth, we are no good and not really writers.

By cracking open that syntax, we release energy and are able to see the world afresh and from a new angle.

Give things the dignity of their names.

Tossing in the color of the sky at the right moment lets the piece breathe a little more.

You become aware that there would be no step without the floor, the sky, the water you drink to stay alive. Everything is interconnected, interpenetrated. Even the season we step in supports our step.

We have a responsibility to treat ourselves kindly; then we will treat the world in the same way.

We should learn to talk, not with judgment, greed, or envy, but with compassion, wonder, and amazement.

It’s also good to know some local people who are writing and whom you can get together with for mutual support. It is very hard to continue just on your own. I tell my students in a group to get to know each other, to share their work with other people. Don’t let it just pile up in notebooks. Let it out. Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. We suffer anyway as human beings. Don’t make it any harder on yourself.

And read again and again the visions of who we are, how we can be. The struggle we go through as human beings, so we can again and again have compassion for ourselves and treat each other kindly.

A perfect studio has always told me that the person is afraid of his own mind and is reflecting in his outward space an inward need for control.

Creating a writing space is another indication of your increased commitment.

Finally, there is no perfection. If you want to write, you have to cut through and write.

If you want to write, finally

you’ll find a way no matter what.

To begin writing from our pain eventually engenders compassion for our small and groping lives. Out of this broken state there comes a tenderness for the cement below our feet, the dried grass cracking in a terrible wind. We can touch the things around us we once thought ugly and see their special detail, the peeling paint and gray of shadows as they are—simply what they are: not bad, just part of the life around us—and love this life because it is ours and in the moment there is nothing better.

If you want to write, write.

Doubt is torture.

Instead, have a tenderness and determination toward your writing,

sense of humor and a deep patience that you are doing the right thing.

It will never desert you, though you may desert it many times.

If I’m smart, I listen. If I’m in a destructive or very lazy space, I don’t, and the blues continue. But when I do listen, it offers me a chance to touch my life which always softens me and allows me to feel connected with myself again.

It’s enough to know you want to write. Write.

Try this: write a series of ten short poems. You only have three minutes to write each one; each one must be three lines. Begin each one with a title that you choose from something your eye falls on: for example, glass, salt, water, light reflecting, the window.

Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak. Then come back.

am i hungry?

If you are bored for years of writing, it means you are not connecting with yourself and the process.

Go into your writing with your whole heart.

Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth, and it spreads out from the page into all of our life, and it should.

That is the

challenge: to let writing teach us about life and life about writing. Let it flow back and forth.

When you accept writing as what you are supposed to do, after you’ve tried everything else—marriage, hippiedom, traveling, living in Minnesota or New York, teaching, spiritual practices—there’s finally no place else to go.

i keep looking for other places to go

Just stay in touch underneath with your commitment for this wild, silly, and wonderful writing practice. Always stay friendly toward it. It’s easier to come back

to a good friend than an enemy.

Wear all white and a stethoscope around your neck—whatever it takes to simply see the world from another angle.

“That makes sense. The more you sit, the more you become who you are.”

But don’t go home so you can stay there. You go home so you can be free;

We are not one thing. Our roots are becoming harder to dig out.

So go home.

so you can penetrate quietly and clearly into your own people and from that begin to understand all people and their struggles.

Poetry is the carrier of life, the vessel of vitality. Each line should be alive.

Something that comes from the source, from first thoughts, wakes and energizes everyone.