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Summary: Free At Last!
Review: I found this book delightful in the way it gave the reader permission to try things. Although I didn't use all of the exercises, I found many of them helpful in those times when I wax literati. The author puts a lot of her own life experiences into the book which may help some people connect, and tire others. However, there is enough kitchen table (cafe table?) wisdom here for anyone interested in a new perspective on the craft.
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Summary: a true revelation!
Review: Being a new writer , and very sceptical about my decision to live in this crazy world of writers i found Nathalie Goldbergs book a true inspirationa and revelation. I started writing better and much more.She actually touched deeper sides of me
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Summary: Weak and off-topic
Review: I have to agree with several other people. The 'rah-rah, you can do it!' attitude might make beginners feel good, but it will probably seem like empty calories once they are facing the task of actually placing good prose onto blank sheets of paper. Also, I could have done with more mechanics and less biography. The Buddhist proselytizing was unexpected and unwelcome. For good nuts and bolts of how to write well, there are other books to try, such as the Writers' Digest series or "How to Write a Damn Good Novel" by James Frey.
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Summary: What a blessing!
Review: I also believe there are no accidents. I can't remember where I first heard about "Writing Down the Bones," but the recommendation was so intriguing that I had to order the tapes. Now I drive along in my car listening to Natalie Goldberg describe all the things we have in common, and her words validate me as a writer. Because of "Writing Down the Bones," I acknowledge writing as my "practice" and have stopped scattering my energies. Thank you, Natalie.
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Summary: Natalie is the queen of the rule-breakers.
Review: By teaching us how to flow rather than structure our writing, we are able to dip into the infinite well of creativity. Clear informative instructions on how to tap into yours. Required reading for any writer as far as I'm concerned.
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Summary: A Good Book, But Let's Not Get Carried Away
Review: I read this book eight years ago, when I had just started writing seriously. At the time it was a godsend: a peppy, cheerful voice inspiring me to get out there and write. But I soon grew dissatisfied with it, as I realized it had inspired me to write reams of absolute crap that I had no desire to read again. Goldberg can teach you how to write. But how do you write something that someone else may want to *read*? The question seems to have escaped Goldberg completely, and it's an interesting one for not a few of us. If you have no ambition at all in your writing, stick with Goldberg, who serves as kind of a literary den mother, reassuring her charges that their papier-mache creations are masterpieces, exactly what Michelangelo might have done had it occurred to him. If you want someone to dish out the bad news, however, if you want to know the exact constellation of fears and neuroses you can look forward to if your goal is to write brilliantly, be published, be reviewed in the New York Times, etc., go for Lammott. She's much more curmudgeonly than Goldberg is, but so is almost every writer I've met in my life. I don't regret the reams of crap Goldberg inspired me to write, but this book is strictly for beginners. Goldberg's a good cheerleader, but after a while, if you want to be any good at writing, you need a good coach.
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Summary: The most practical tool a writer can have in their kit!
Review: Natalie Goldberg has given us a handbook that no serious writer can afford to be without. Writing Down the Bones brings us through fun and inspirational exercises to get the creative juices flowing, while all the while reminding us just why it is we write. I've never been the same after reading and taking this book to heart. It should be on every writer's bookshelf at the very least; carry it with you if you can!
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Summary: This book is a sleeping giant of energy.
Review: I bought "Writing Down the Bones" by mistake. When I first got online a few years ago, I was trawling around Amazon's Website and clicked the wrong button, but thought I had corrected my mistake and "unordered" this book. Imagine my surprise when it showed up on my doorstep a few days later. Because I believe there are no accidents, I hung onto the book, knowing I would need it sometime in the future. I was right. A year later, I got a job writing and editing software manuals. (Try making those witty and brilliant!) Two years later, I enrolled in a creative writing course at my local junior college to get the dry taste of computer lingo out of my mouth, and "Writing Down the Bones" was the only required text. Since then, I have used this book to jump-start me when I can't get my brain to turn over in anything other than PC or mainframe mode, because Ms. Goldberg's fearless approach to creativity never fails me. Even though I'm an editor as well as a writer, I agree with her view that mechanics are secondary to the energy attached to the writer's words. Just like the human heart, the structure is dead without the life force to drive it. I have two suggestions for writing exercises. First, write haiku on Post-It notes. (I find it useful to challenge myself to express the essence in as few words as possible.) Then get up from whatever you're not quite doing, and buy this book. After all, you're reading this review, and there are no accidents. Good luck!
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Summary: Writing Down the Bones is a marvelous book!
Review: I was trying to write my first short story in English, (I'm Swedish), and I was having immense difficulty getting started. A friend of mine told me this book saved her life as a writer once, and so I borrowed it at the library. After one chapter I knew I needed my own copy; the book just gripped me, told me I could write, because it didn't matter how I wrote, how long it was, how good... You write for yourself. Natalie Goldberg showed me not how to write, but how to relax in my writing, be myself. It is not a book for someone who wants to be instructed in "how to write a short story", or "how to write poetry". But then, if you let yourself be instructed in how to write, you can never be a real writer. Natalie Goldberg showed me all the little things that are so wonderful about being a writer. Sitting in a coffee shop, sipping a mocha freeze with your friend, writing about everything and nothing; getting up before everyone else, and sip in the beautiful solitude and the silence, and filter them into your writing... Writing Down the Bones is a book for every writer.
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Summary: More about Writing Down the Bones
Review: Before her book Writing Down the Bones was published in 1986, Natalie Goldberg was an unknown student of Buddhism with a passion for writing. Today, with nearly one million copies of Writing Down the Bones in print, Natalie Goldberg has helped change the way writing is practiced in homes, schools, and workshops across America. Here she talks about what it means to "write down the bones," and her new full-length audio Natalie, you teach that no special tools are needed to be a writer. In other words you can write wherever you are now, as long as you have a pencil and a piece of paper. But people still make excuses for why they can't write. I'm curious to know what the most common excuses you hear from students in your workshops are about why they can't write. Natalie afraid to follow what I really want. I can't do it right now, but it's my deepest dream. I can't do it because I have a family and I have to make a living. I am scared that I'm not good enough." I don't pay much attention at that level. All I hear is an excuse. In other words, these people want something but they're not willing to step forward and grab it. Over the last 17 years that I've been teaching writers, what I've watched is that people don't let themselves burn. They don't let their passion come alive. They don't feed it. To me it doesn't really matter what the excuse is. Now I can hear you saying, "Well, but what if the excuse is true? What if the person does have six children and they work two jobs in order to feed them?" What I say is that if the person burns to write, they will have to find time to do it, even if it's one half hour a week. You have to somehow address your whole life. You can't put it off till you're 60. You might die at 59. You know, we all have tremendously strong monkey minds that are very creative, that can make endless excuses. "I really can't write today because my daughter is having trouble in school. I really can't write because I have a stomachache every time I write." Monkey mind will always think of new reasons why we can't write. What I teach is term. It refers to mental activity that creates busyness which keeps us away from our true hearts. And it's an extraordinary truth. Look at our whole culture; it's built on busyness, and that's why we're so unhappy. But part of us loves busyness, including Natalie Goldberg. You have to pay attention and learn to understand how monkey mind works. What does your true heart want? You have to give it at least half your energy. Otherwise you put an incredible emphasis on perseverance and determination. What I know talent exists. It's kind of free-floating. Like maybe you're born stays pretty. You know, on your deathbed, does it really matter?I think talent is something like a water table under the earth. You tap into it with your effort and it flows through you. It's energy. I see many, many students who can naturally write. You can't believe it - the first time they pick up a pen, people's mouths are hanging open. But they don't stick with it. Maybe it's too easy so they don't believe it was really good, sometimes it just isn't that important. But if someone sits in the corner of the room struggling with the work, and keeps showing up for years, after a while their little coal begins to glow. I never thought of myself as talented - no one ever told me I had any talent, and any time I went to a palm reader I was told I should be an accountant. It was my own effort, really, that made new lines in my palm. I've always believed in human effort. Not just hard work, like "put your shoulder to the grindstone." What I'm talking about is waking up. Talent has nothing to do with waking up. I'm talking about being aware and mindful as a writer, knowing the names of trees and plants. Noticing the light and how it's hitting a tree or hitting the chrome on a car. That comes with practice. It's pretty nice if you're talented, but it will only take you so the story of your Zen master Katagiri Roshi, and how he encouraged you to make writing your spiritual practice. This story has become a kind of legend, Natalie. Please unravel how it happened, and explain how you really 26, I was sitting a lot of zazen, and I began trying to figure out how to write. I didn't have any rules. I didn't call it writing practice, but I just wrote and wrote. Then in 1976, I went to study writing with Allen Ginsberg for six weeks at the Naropa Institute. He brought together a lot of stuff about writing and its relationship to the mind, and I continued to pursue it after the course ended. And then I started to time myself while I kept my hand moving as I observed my mind. I went deeper and deeper into it and noticed things, but I didn't give the experience a special name. In this way I learned which practices helped me write, and which didn't. I did it this way for years before I met Katagiri Roshi. When I met him and began sitting with him, he said one day, "Make writing your practice." At the time I never listened to anything he said; I was so arrogant. I said, "Oh, that's ridiculous, Roshi. I'm going to keep sitting." I thought he was trying to get rid of me; you know, like "Get out of here Natalie, we don't want you in the zendo." So many years later, I finally began to understand what Roshi said. And it was actually in the writing of Writing Down the Bones that it all came together. There was a great "Ah." About two years after the book was published I went to see him and I said to him, "Why did you tell me to make writing my practice?" And he looked at me very nonchalantly and said, "Well, you liked to write, that's why I told you." He understood where my passion was, where my energy was. So in other words, if you really want to be a runner but you think you should meditate, make running your practice and then go deeply into it at all levels. But Roshi also said, "Ah, but it's pretty good to sit too." So I also sat to keep myself honest, and to somehow develop my back. You know, my front was all energy. I explain it all in Bones - you have to have quiet peace at your back, technique that allows you to contact the vastness of being without going crazy
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