Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

by Natalie Goldberg

It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand.

A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds.

notebook. It also helps me locate them more easily—“Oh, yes, that summer I wrote in the rodeo series notebooks.”

At the beginning you may want to start small and after a week increase your time, or you may want to dive in for an hour the first time. It doesn’t matter.

First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.