Natalie Goldberg

. That was the original flame. It was good enough, but along the way I mixed it all up. I thought it could heal the world; it could heal me; it could do everything, because I felt so good when I wrote. I took one step ahead of the ordinary good act of writing. I wanted to become successful, noticed, famous, so I could finally get the love and attention I didn’t get as a child.

I took writing outside writing. I took my life outside life. I wanted to throw it way ahead of me, thinking it would cure something way behind me. “If I get famous, then... ,” “If I get this book finished, then... ,” “If I win this grant, then... ,” “If I get published, then...”

We need to let writing be writing and let it give us what it gives us in the moment. If we connect with anything in the moment, it frees us of the past, present, and future. We are just there. If we are chopping wood, we are chopping wood; brushing our teeth, brushing our teeth; walking, walking.

we all have a dream of telling our stories—of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die.

Once you connect with your mind, you are who you are and you’re free.

I want to add, “Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”

You might read a section in this book that says to be very specific and precise. That’s to help the ailment of abstract, general meandering in your writing. But then you read another chapter that says lose control, write on waves of emotion. That’s to encourage you to really say deep down what you need to say. Or in one chapter it says to fix up a studio, that you need a private place to write; the next chapter says, “Get out of the house, away from the dirty dishes. Go write in a café.” Some techniques are appropriate at some times and some for other times. Every moment is different. Different things work. One isn’t wrong and the other right.

Experiment. Even try writing in a big drawing pad. It is true that the inside world creates the outside world, but the outside world and our tools also affect the way we form our thoughts. Try skywriting.

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash. For instance, the phrase “I cut the daisy from my throat” shot through my mind. Now my second thought, carefully tutored in 1 + 1 = 2 logic, in politeness, fear, and embarrassment at the natural, would say, “That’s ridiculous. You sound suicidal. Don’t show yourself cutting your throat. Someone will think you are crazy.” And instead, if we give the censor its way, we write, “My throat was a little sore, so I didn’t say anything.” Proper and boring

everchanging and full of human suffering. So if you express something egoless, it is also full of energy because it is expressing the truth of the way things are. You are not carrying the burden of ego in your expression, but are riding for moments the waves of human consciousness and using your personal details to express the ride

The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think—well-mannered, congenial.

In class, we don’t see how a writer organizes her day or dreams up writing ideas. We sit in class and learn what narrative is but we can’t figure out how to do it.