Rating: 
Summary: Invigorating boost for creative writing
Review: This was one of the required textbooks for my first high school English class. Only one chapter of it was required reading, but when I opened it, I saw writing with a freedom and honesty my 14-year-old self had never experienced before, and went on to read the entire book. Since then, I've re-read it many times, going through several copies, since I always seem to be giving mine away to friends that are writers.
Other reviewers have said this book only applies to poetry; I feel it applies to any piece of writing that you want to be naked and honest, fully yourself. It's perfect for poetry and short essays, yes. I've also found it fantastic for self-reflections, journal entries of sorts; the journal entries I've written after reading Natalie's book have always been powerfully cathartic, and self-discoveries in their own right. Try writing an essay on the topic "I Am" right after reading her chapter on identity. You'll be surprised.
Finally, for those struggling with writer's block on a more formal piece of writing where you can't really write nakedly (such as newspaper articles or engineering papers, which I run across more than creative writing, being a student journalist and engineering student), read this book anyway. It will jolt you out and start you writing boldly, and once you have that writing momentum, it's easier to harness into whatever style you need to be in.
If you are a fearless writer or genuinely want to become one, get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: "Don't Worry About Communicating with Others"
Review: In Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Natalie Goldberg spends as much time trying to get in touch with her real self that she loses touch with her readers. She so over-emphasizes spontaneity and originality, that she ends up abusing the English language without mercy.
She is perfectly content with prepositions which pop up anywhere in her sentences. She seems to take a positive delight in split infinitives and sentence fragments. Occasionally, they are fresh, but mostly they just come off as amateurish and sloppy. Her writing does not carry her thought.
Writing requires deep sincere thought and an honest encounter with feelings, sometimes very well hidden within, but writing is primarily communication and there is a craft involved here. You can't communicate raw feelings, or raw thought for that matter. They are too subjective. These raw impulses have to be filtered through language and channeled into established patterns so they can help others see and feel what you have experienced.
It does our guide very little credit when she insists on putting her message before our receiving her message. Sloppy style, awkward constructions, queer phrases and spontaneous but idiosyncratic thoughts don't communicate well.
If Natalie Goldberg's book does succeed in freeing the writer within, the whole job of finding ways of expressing that writer to others in effective words (what most of us call writing) has yet to be done. If writing were just a form of personal therapy, then her book would have merit. God knows we need avenues to self-awareness, and I am not against these. What I am objecting to in Writing Down the Bones is the unwarranted assumption that writing for one's self is the same as writing for others.
Good writing is more than just personal therapy. Good writing spends at least half of its energy reaching out to the reader. Good writing extends beyond the selfish invitation, "come into my world," by providing accessible pathways into that world. These do not appear without effort.
If Writing Down the Bones is to approach the worthy goal of conveying how to communicate, it needs much more emphasis on finding and touching the readers' soul and perhaps a little less on overcoming writers' block and achieving a state of blessed oneness. Writing Down the Bones makes the unwarranted assumption that illuminating the self and illuminating others are the same thing.
Rating:
Summary: Not Just about Writing
Review: I first encountered this book in a playwriting class in college. Naturally I was hesitant to read anything that had to do with writing. I put the reading assignment off for days and days. Finally when I buckled down to read the few assigned pages I found I was trapped. I couldn't put the book down. Next thing you know I'd read the whole thing. This book is great for beginners or for those who aren't interested in writing. For those people who think that they have nothing to write about they will soon find they are dead wrong, and all out of excuses. The other thing that I found really amazing about this book is that a lot of the principles in this book can be related to other areas of your life. This book teaches discipline and motivation along with several other important life lessons. I would highly recommend this book to everyone to read.
Rating:
Summary: Glad I read it!
Review: For a little tiny book, it is definately full! I almost decided against reading it, based off some of the reviews here, but thought I might as well and see if it was something that could help me.
The inside of my book has penning that says, 'The Zen and Art of Writing" which, I thnk would have been a more appropriate title, but wouldn't have likely been nearly as popular as the title it is. I don't think this is so much a book for every writer. This is a fantastic book for poets! I highly recommend any poet reading this book! And funnily enough, the same handwriting says in the back, "better for personal poetry, journals, and memoirs than fiction" which was exactly what I was thinking throughout the whole book.
But don't discredit it! It has a bunch of wonderful ideas to help you get out of the non-writing rut and into simply writing, even if it's horrible and you don't want to admit it's yours. It's more of a book to show you that the important thing is getting down the writing, not always the qualilty of it. Of finding our best styles, places and feelings and being able to use them to our own advatange. To be able to distance ourselves from our writing and be able to review it with the eye of someone else, which, really, we all need, I think, as writers.
I think everyone who reads this book will get something different out of it though, so my best advice is buy it. Read it. See if you can apply some of it to your work, and pass it on if not.
Rating:
Summary: Writing is an integral part of life
Review: The main message of this book is that if you are alive, you can write. Which is one of these zen-like truths that it is easy to understand, but damnably difficult to learn to use in practice.
Ms. Goldberg combines two great scholastic traditions in this book: the jewish and the zen buddhist. She tells us how essential it is to observe and to feel, and then how to just let the urge to write flow trhough you.
As with t'ai ch'i and meditation so it is with writing: we have to relearn a lot, and to go back to the simplistic.
It is a book to read, and tyhen keep at your side to glance in ever so often.
Rating:
Summary: Ugh. Too hokey.
Review: I've read a fair amount of books on writing. I know this one is considered a "classic" in the genre, but I didn't care for it. It has some good practical advice. Nothing I haven't heard or read elsewhere, but good reminders nonetheless. But what I'll probably remember about this book is the flakiness of Goldberg, who insists on referring to her Zen training in every chapter. Enough about Katagiri Roshi and your meditations already. I'm sure they're wonderful for you. And the chapter that starts, "There were several time in Taos that I called a story-telling circle," makes me want to rip the page out and eat it. Try BIRD BY BIRD or even STEPHEN KING'S ON WRITING before this one.
Rating:
Summary: A Writing Classic
Review: Natalie Goldberg's insights about writing as a spirtual practice are just as valid today as they were in 1986 when this book was first published. Her suggestions to writers work, both for beginning writers and for writers who depend on words in order to make a living. I recommend this book to the emerging writers I mentor as a must-have reference second only to a good dictionary. As a professional writer who has written over 20 books and 500 magazine articles, I've given Writing Down the Bones away several times after mistakenly deciding that I'd outgrown it. Just as often I've had to go out and buy another copy to remind myself that there's more to the writing life than rejections, and royalties. Every time I reread it, I find something new. Last year I read Goldberg's memoir, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, which provides insights about how she came to her beliefs about writing and spirituality. I suggest reading both books.
Rating: 
Summary: Good starting point
Review: I really enjoyed the way this author wrote. Her tips are easy to follow and her suggestions make sense. Overall a very good book for a new writer.
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