Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

by Natalie Goldberg

You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: My

Once you connect with your mind, you are who you are and you’re free.

Accept loss forever Be submissive to everything, open, listening No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge Be in love with your life

Believe me, you, too, can find your place inside the huge terrain of writing. No one is so odd as to be left out.

You actually become larger than yourself, and first thoughts are present. They

I know the fields around Elkton because I say I do and because I want to walk out into them forever. Don’t

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.

A name is what we carry all our life, and we respond to its call in a classroom, to its pronunciation at a graduation, or to our name whispered in the night.

Students say to me, “Well, you’re just the teacher. You have to say something positive.” Friends say, “Well, you’re just my friend. You already like me.” Stop! Really stop when someone is complimenting you. Even if it’s painful and you are not used to it, just keep breathing, listen, and let yourself take it in. Feel how good it is. Build up a tolerance for positive, honest support.

When one person dies out of his time, it affects us all. We don’t live for ourselves; we are interconnected.

Only we forget when we are busy or frightened, as my friend was. Afraid of being lost, she became lost.

Mozart used to have his wife read stories to him while he was composing for the same reason.

Gore Vidal has a wonderful quote: “As every author—and every reader—knows, writing well is the best trip of them all.” Don’t even worry about writing “well”; just writing is heaven.

Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind that “The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.” You need a large field in writing too. Don’t pull in the reins too quickly. Give yourself tremendous space to wander in, to be utterly lost with no name, and then come back and speak.

It’s your life, begin from it. Use Loneliness LAST NIGHT I was sitting with a very old friend in my living room.

It is very difficult for us to comprehend and value our own lives. It is much easier for us to see things outside ourselves.

We are good, and when our work is good, it is good. We should acknowledge it and stand behind it.

is not unlike a mother who is constantly critical of her mothering, and yet you look at her children and see that they are happy, beautiful. She is doing a good job.

See revision as “envisioning again.”

Anything we fully do is an alone journey. No matter how happy your friends may be for you, how much they support you, you can’t expect anyone to match the intensity of your emotions or to completely understand what you went through.

Something so simple and obvious, but we keep missing it. We need to discover it over and over.

And to somehow develop my back, my spine. You know, my front was all energy. You have to have quiet peace at your back. Otherwise you burn up.