Rating: 
Summary: An old favorite...
Review: This was one of my first favorite books about writing, and coming back to it years later I find that it still delivers. Natalie makes you want to put the book down frequently so that you can scribble away. Now that's a sign of some serious inspiration. I went on recently to read Long, Quiet Highway, and loved that as well. She is just one cool chick. Read this, and watch yourself write. You will, I promise.
Rating: 
Summary: waste of time
Review: offers meaningless advise (get a fast pen?) simplistic and useless. go to the movies rather than waste time on this meaningless book.
Rating:
Summary: Warm and fuzzy
Review: What Natalie has acomplished here is a little pocket book of inspiration for bringing the writer within out. All kinds of good advice from her experiences and teachings. In some ways it even has a zen aproach with quotes like there should be no seperate you when you are deeply engaged.Writing does writing.I keep this book on me all times. I read it many times over during my lunch break. It leaves a good feeling within.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile
Review: I've been amused in reading the reviews of this book. So well written (excepting this one, possibly) and containing such diverse opinions. This is obviously a book you either love or hate. Left brain vs. right brain writers in the ring. I must be in the right brain camp as found it to be very worthwhile. It has provided sparks of inspiration when I needed them. It is not the only writers' guide I have read, but has been a good one to me. Get it if you prefer a nurturing voice rather than a directing one to guide you.
Rating:
Summary: Touchy-Feely, strictly for the self-absorbed
Review: The fatal flaw in Ms. Goldberg's book is summed in one section, "Why Do I Write?" One of the ghastly answers she offers (#5) is, "No one listens when I speak." She ignores the obvious: to be listened to--much less read--YOU MUST HAVE SOMETHING INTRIGUING TO SAY. In another telling moment, she and her friend Kate "spent the whole day talking" about how Hemingway "mistreated his wife and drank too much." They never examine why he won the Nobel Prize! If you long to--as Ms. Goldberg advises--fill up "notebooks with funny covers" featuring "Garfield, the Muppets, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars," churning out solipsistic navel-gazings that no else will ever read, then this is the book for you. Ms. Goldberg displays TOTAL lack of organization. (Some chapters are only 3 paragraphs long, with simplistic titles like "Be Specific," "Trust Yourself," and "Writing is a Communal Act.") Oh, and she has "taught writing workshops for the last eleven years"--once again, proving the old adage that those who can't, teach.
Rating: 
Summary: What are her assumptions?
Review: Natlie Goldberg seems to make two ustated assumptions:
1) that what you are writing is very autobiographical
2) that you have a hard time writing (Oh, poor author. Let me hold your hand.) If this is true you may find her book useful. If you are writing more imaginatively or if you are interested in making your writing more intense and effective I would not choose her book. If you seek technique, rather than just encouragement, try Marge Piercy's "So You Want to Write."
Rating:
Summary: My Dog Lily
Review: Dear Friends,
My Dog Lily taught
me how to write,
and here's how:
1)Pretend to throw,
and then:
Throw her,Lily, a
juicy steak.
2)Watch her
Jump up and Down
in Anticipation,
then catch the
large thing in her
mouth and paws-
like she has
won the Kentucky Derby
and the Powerball Lottery-
and a night with
Mel Gibson,for example. Whatever....
Watch her attack this
piece of beef like it
is her last meal.
She will destroy, consume,
love and destroy this
former cow, until this cow
is naught but bone.
Then, the bone is cracked
open by her mighty jaw,
and the marrow is
new flesh to be exploited,
destroyed, loved and
denuded.
She will worry this bone
until it is a sorry
relict of a cow:
Broken and almost
indistinguishable
from any other broken object-
almost.
This,This,This I believe
is the True Meaning of
"Writing Down The Bones": Destroy Life[metaphorically
speaking] like a dog does
to a Bone, until you
have understood Life.
Then, write about this
Life.
In other words,
Be an enzyme, a biological
catalyst, so to speak.
Writing is about
Analyzing
down to the bones,
and then
re-creating "Life"
in your own
imagination.
danny.
Rating:
Summary: a guide to releasing your soul
Review: I bought this book on recommendations from other writers and journal keepers, but I was openly apprehensive that it would be just another "you can do it" or worse another pontification on the divine art of writing. I couldn't have been more wrong! Of all the how-to writing books I have read, all the while looking for that one filled with honest, practical advice to help shake loose my creativity free from the confines of English class rules and order, this is the best one out there. Natalie starts out telling you that it isn't an ordered process that fuels creativity. She lets you know up front that all those rules and "regulations" that you learned in every English class you ever took don't apply in real creativity. She takes you step by step, holding your hand thruout, thru a creative storm complete with exercises designed to frighten and enlighten. In the end you realize that you are, indeed, a creative person when not confined to the traditional definitions of creativity and art. I felt I could do anything, write anything, and create anything when I was done with this book. I read it straight thru in an afternoon and then went back over the period of a week and did the exercises. I still go back, months later, re-working the exercises, reading favourite chapters, and reminding myself of the wonderful wellspring of creativity in all of us. I highly recommend this book to anyone frustrated with the traditional "this is how to be creative" books that so many of us have trudged thru in desperate hopes of finding a single grain of enlightenment. Natalie gives it to you in page after page of insight, comfort, and freedom. You won't be disappointed - unless, of course, you really do like all those ridiculous rules and regulations.
Rating:
Summary: writing teacher loves Goldman
Review: I spend time telling my students to be themselves, to write what they know, to use their natural voices. Then I give them a handout with lead paragraphs from a cross-section of student writings. Invariably the "good" students--those who can write in complete sentences, who manage to find the spell-checker, and who know how to use punctuation--will pick the academic sounding leads. They all believe that they must use four syllable words to impress the teacher. They repeat the same abstractions over and over, stretching nothing of importance to three full pages. So when Natalie Goldman tells us "write clearly and with great honesty" and then calls it "writing down the bones," something in her essay rings very true. Goldman's book is a series of commentaries on the tools, the mindset, the insecurities, practices, and disciplines of the writer. She pushes her audience to take chances, to not only let themselves fail but to learn from their failures. She tells us that: "When you learn to write this way--right out of your own mind--you have to be willing to write junk for five years." At the same time, however, she expects--and it is clear that she, herself, feels--a level of joy in the process. She tells us to seek our safety in the right pen, a good notebook, and to use the technology we find comfortable. She allows us to appreciate the ego within, to go ahead and celebrate the our internal "voices" even when they produce "terrible self-pitying junk for page after page." Out of sheer volume and continual practice Goldman expects the writer will be reborn in her students. From the tricks to get around the writer's block to the rewards for filling a page Goldman is a goldmine of simple advice and ideas that I find exceptionally suited for use in my own classes with my own budding student writers.
Rating:
Summary: Hippie Bones Lie Near Parched Death Valley Dry Lake
Review: The Beat Generation
is so Over.
Zen Buddhism is
a big, big, big
confidence game.
Natalie Goldberg,
a very nice person,
and Zen Veteran,
from Looooooong
Guyland, got
sucked into
the Naropa Institute/
Allan Ginsberg
spiritual/poetic
writing ghetto
and never escaped.
On the other hand,
she absolutely
fosters and encourages
any and all writers
to go the last mile
to become a writer-
which is a great and
good, admirable
feat.
Her Voice, Her Persona
are Irresistable: Charming, Loveable,
Kittenish.
Her cloddish references
to her Zen teacher
Katagiri-roshi,
become annoying.
The sub-text of
this cassette:
Zen-Lesbian-Vegetarian-
JournalWriting-Ageing
Hippie=GOOD,
All others=BAD,
handicaps this
cassette.
I listened to 9 hours
of this cassette, plus
3 hours of the cassette
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING,
before stuffing
the cassettes back in the
box.
I cannot deny my love
for Natalie,the person, as she appears on this tape.
She is so charming!
I cannot deny my irritation
with her presentation,
which so quickly
wears thin.
A Big conflict.
However, I believe she could
write a dozen
great novels:
She has the Heart, Mind,
Guts, Sensitivity and
Insuperable Diligence
to create good fiction
far into the future.
Am I, then, a
mean man?
P.S.: I think... Good Writing can be found in the Final movie-script of "Galaxy Quest",for example,which
sings like a taut violin string.
The Shooting script of "Galaxy Quest"
[at scifiscripts.com],however
is lumpy and flaccid.
Much can be learned I believe
from comparing the two
danny
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