Natalie Goldberg
Natalie Goldberg
Natalie Goldbergis an American popular New Age author and speaker She is best known for a series of books which explore writing as Zen practice...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
writing artist ideas
Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
real writing needs
Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.
thinking water effort
I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
drinking water should
Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.
cracks needs language
As writers we need to crack open language.
running hate writing
We have to look at our own inertia, insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable to say. When your writing blooms out of the back of this garbage compost, it is very stable. You are not running from anything. You can have a sense of artistic security. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
letting-go gratitude grease
Can we walk that thin line between constant change and continuation? And in the middle of this flux, feel gratitude but not hold on? Gratitude greases the joints to let us let go, and at the same time to stop and realize we received something. Gratitude is the most developed and mature of human emotions.
moving home parent
It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.
live-life writing second-chance
As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. ...This is our life and it's not going to last forever. There isn't time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.
fun people
You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.
book encounters wonderful
To encounter a fine book and have time to read it is a wonderful thing.
heart writing thinking
Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.
writing thinking mind
The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.
writing cutting darkness
The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...