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A review by forgottensecret
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
5.0
'We don’t exist in any solid form. There is no permanent truth you can corner in a poem that will satisfy you forever. Don’t identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you. They were a great moment going through you. A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture.'
In CBS's 'How I Met Your Mother', the maker of the Playbook - Barney Stinson - would often quip that he had a guy for everything: a suit guy, a tie guy, even a moat guy. In a similar way, different books on writing provide different services. The service that Natalie Goldberg provides is to drain the excuses that hinder us from a consistent practice.
Goldberg knows what it means to teach writing and be a writer. At the time of writing, she had given writing workshops at the University of New Mexico, given classes to students ranging from nuns to hippies to gay men's groups, and had published a poetry collection. In addition, she was a student of the Soto Zen roshi, Dainin Katagiri (who himself had served Shunryu Suzuki prior to his death). This mixture of Zen training and dedication to her craft contributes to a voice in 'Writing Down the Bones' which holds a special place for many readers. For those who balk at the sounding of a gong, this book is first and foremost about developing a writing practice. I preferred this to Julia Cameron's 'Right to Write', but both share the aim of reorienting our misconception about the 'tortuous activity' of writing. Writing mustn't be so spoiled by reverence; in regarding the practice so highly, it interferes with us making an effort. We must write, even if in seeking the emotive grandeur of an ocean, we produce an inflatable pool. An inflatable pool can at least be a drinking ground for pigeons. A non-existent pool is good for no-one.
As the book is a series of non-organised essays, I will quote my favourites with a small commentary:
When we sit down to write, we need to give ourselves permission to write horribly and without a destination:
'When you write, don’t say, “I’m going to write a poem.” That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.” You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination. I’ve had students who said they decided they were going to write the great American novel and haven’t written a line since. If every time you sat down, you expected something great, writing would always be a great disappointment. Plus that expectation would also keep you from writing.'
Expand the limits of how much you think that you can write. Again, if we relax our definition of what writing is, then we are much more likely to write a lot more. If we permit bad poetry and loose descriptions, to write and worry about critique later, then we will write more. There is an unrelated passage where Natalie's neighbour found one of her old journals and saw that they were 'shit', which the neighbour found empowering. The funny thing is that the changed definition doesn't result in a sharp fall in the quality of our writing, it only makes it a lot easier to begin that day:
'My rule is to finish a notebook a month. (I’m always making up writing guidelines for myself.) Simply to fill it. That is the practice. My ideal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I don't do that. No one lives up to his ideal.
In my notebooks I don't bother with the side margin or the one at the top: I fill the whole page. I am not writing anymore for a teacher or for school. I am writing for myself first and I don’t have to stay within my limits, not even margins. This gives me a psychological freedom and permission. And when my writing is on and I’m really cooking, I usually forget about punctuation, spelling, etc. I also notice that my handwriting changes. It becomes larger and looser.'
One of my favourite pieces of advice was allowing one's writing to be illogical. One only has to read the poems of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath to see the imagery available when we allow our writing to be more associative. One only has to read Marcel Proust to see the reminiscences strung from a scent. In sum, be more mulish against rigidity and form:
'Writing practice embraces your whole life and doesn’t demand any logical form: no chapter 19 following the action in chapter 18. It’s a place that you can come to wild and unbridled, mixing the dream of your grandmother’s soup with the astounding clouds outside your window. It is undirected and has to do with all of you right in your present moment. Think of writing practice as loving arms you come to illogically and incoherently. It’s our wild forest where we gather energy before going to prune our garden, write our fine books and novels. It’s a continual practice.'
A theme throughout the book is to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Sol Stein in his book 'Stein on Writing', similarly expresses the writer's job as seeing the particularities and fawning over what others consider ordinary. Part of that is to resist devaluing our experience. A related note is to see that writers live twice:
'We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn’t matter.'
'Writers write about things that other people don’t pay much attention to. For instance, our tongues, elbows, water coming out of a water faucet, the kind of garbage trucks New York City has, the color purple of a faded sign in a small town. I always tell my elementary school students, “Please, no more Michael Jacksons, Atari games, TV characters in your poems.” They get all the attention they need, plus millions of dollars in advertising to ensure their popularity. A writer’s job is to make the ordinary come alive, to awaken ourselves to the specialness of simply being.'
'Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.'
Overall, Goldberg is a damned good cheerleader. Through the philosophy of 'Writing Down the Bones', I have written much more regularly in my journal since I read it. I would highly recommend this to all aspiring diarists, to people who feel that they could record more of their experience, and for those who would like a friendship with writing.
In CBS's 'How I Met Your Mother', the maker of the Playbook - Barney Stinson - would often quip that he had a guy for everything: a suit guy, a tie guy, even a moat guy. In a similar way, different books on writing provide different services. The service that Natalie Goldberg provides is to drain the excuses that hinder us from a consistent practice.
Goldberg knows what it means to teach writing and be a writer. At the time of writing, she had given writing workshops at the University of New Mexico, given classes to students ranging from nuns to hippies to gay men's groups, and had published a poetry collection. In addition, she was a student of the Soto Zen roshi, Dainin Katagiri (who himself had served Shunryu Suzuki prior to his death). This mixture of Zen training and dedication to her craft contributes to a voice in 'Writing Down the Bones' which holds a special place for many readers. For those who balk at the sounding of a gong, this book is first and foremost about developing a writing practice. I preferred this to Julia Cameron's 'Right to Write', but both share the aim of reorienting our misconception about the 'tortuous activity' of writing. Writing mustn't be so spoiled by reverence; in regarding the practice so highly, it interferes with us making an effort. We must write, even if in seeking the emotive grandeur of an ocean, we produce an inflatable pool. An inflatable pool can at least be a drinking ground for pigeons. A non-existent pool is good for no-one.
As the book is a series of non-organised essays, I will quote my favourites with a small commentary:
When we sit down to write, we need to give ourselves permission to write horribly and without a destination:
'When you write, don’t say, “I’m going to write a poem.” That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.” You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination. I’ve had students who said they decided they were going to write the great American novel and haven’t written a line since. If every time you sat down, you expected something great, writing would always be a great disappointment. Plus that expectation would also keep you from writing.'
Expand the limits of how much you think that you can write. Again, if we relax our definition of what writing is, then we are much more likely to write a lot more. If we permit bad poetry and loose descriptions, to write and worry about critique later, then we will write more. There is an unrelated passage where Natalie's neighbour found one of her old journals and saw that they were 'shit', which the neighbour found empowering. The funny thing is that the changed definition doesn't result in a sharp fall in the quality of our writing, it only makes it a lot easier to begin that day:
'My rule is to finish a notebook a month. (I’m always making up writing guidelines for myself.) Simply to fill it. That is the practice. My ideal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I don't do that. No one lives up to his ideal.
In my notebooks I don't bother with the side margin or the one at the top: I fill the whole page. I am not writing anymore for a teacher or for school. I am writing for myself first and I don’t have to stay within my limits, not even margins. This gives me a psychological freedom and permission. And when my writing is on and I’m really cooking, I usually forget about punctuation, spelling, etc. I also notice that my handwriting changes. It becomes larger and looser.'
One of my favourite pieces of advice was allowing one's writing to be illogical. One only has to read the poems of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath to see the imagery available when we allow our writing to be more associative. One only has to read Marcel Proust to see the reminiscences strung from a scent. In sum, be more mulish against rigidity and form:
'Writing practice embraces your whole life and doesn’t demand any logical form: no chapter 19 following the action in chapter 18. It’s a place that you can come to wild and unbridled, mixing the dream of your grandmother’s soup with the astounding clouds outside your window. It is undirected and has to do with all of you right in your present moment. Think of writing practice as loving arms you come to illogically and incoherently. It’s our wild forest where we gather energy before going to prune our garden, write our fine books and novels. It’s a continual practice.'
A theme throughout the book is to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Sol Stein in his book 'Stein on Writing', similarly expresses the writer's job as seeing the particularities and fawning over what others consider ordinary. Part of that is to resist devaluing our experience. A related note is to see that writers live twice:
'We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn’t matter.'
'Writers write about things that other people don’t pay much attention to. For instance, our tongues, elbows, water coming out of a water faucet, the kind of garbage trucks New York City has, the color purple of a faded sign in a small town. I always tell my elementary school students, “Please, no more Michael Jacksons, Atari games, TV characters in your poems.” They get all the attention they need, plus millions of dollars in advertising to ensure their popularity. A writer’s job is to make the ordinary come alive, to awaken ourselves to the specialness of simply being.'
'Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.'
Overall, Goldberg is a damned good cheerleader. Through the philosophy of 'Writing Down the Bones', I have written much more regularly in my journal since I read it. I would highly recommend this to all aspiring diarists, to people who feel that they could record more of their experience, and for those who would like a friendship with writing.