Natalie Goldberg Writing Quotes & Sayings

[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed. — Natalie Goldberg

It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice. — Natalie Goldberg

Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.. — Natalie Goldberg

It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice. — Natalie Goldberg

I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am; the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974. — Natalie Goldberg

If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you. — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you wrote, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don't only listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck.
Listening is receptivity. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write. You can take in the way things are without judgment, and the next day you can write the truth about the way things are."
...If you can capture the way things are that's all the poetry you ever need. — Natalie Goldberg

Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery. — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

I met a doctor the other night who told me he had always wanted to be a writer. I nodded. People always tell me that ... Then I thought to myself, 'You know, I've never met a writer who wanted to be anything else. They might bitch about something they're writing or about their poverty, but they never say they want to quit ... and if they do abandon it they become crazy, drunk or suicidal.' Writing is elemental. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing is 100% listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. if you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. — Natalie Goldberg

My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal. — Natalie Goldberg

When you write, don't say, "I'm going to write a poem." That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, "I am free to write the worst junk in the world." — Natalie Goldberg

I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, 'What I Did Last Summer.' When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: 'It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.' I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: 'My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand. — Natalie Goldberg

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people
people who supposedly want to write
read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them. — Natalie Goldberg

First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don't want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don't get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95 ... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper. — Natalie Goldberg

There's an old adage in writing: 'Don't tell, but show.' Writing is not psychology. We do not talk 'about' feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader's hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words. — Natalie Goldberg

In other words you disappear, you become one with your words, not separate, and when you put your pen down, the you who was writing is gone. — Natalie Goldberg

Tulips come up in spring for no reason. Of course, you planted bulbs and now in April the earth warms up. But why? For no reason except gravity. Why gravity? For no reason. And why did you plant red tulip bulbs to begin with? For beauty, which is itself and has no reason. So the world is empty. Things rise and fall for no reason. And what a great opportunity that is! You can start writing again at any minute. Let go of all your failures and sit down and write something great. Or write something terrible and feel great about it. — Natalie Goldberg

It's the process of writing and life that matters.Too many writers have written great books and gone insane or alcoholic or killed themselves. This process teaches about sanity. We are trying to become sane along with our poems and stories. — Natalie Goldberg

Ninety percent of writing is about listening. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing is the act of discovery. — Natalie Goldberg

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it — Natalie Goldberg

When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you. — Natalie Goldberg

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open. — Natalie Goldberg

The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does. — Natalie Goldberg

I think talent is like a water table under the earth - you tap it with your effort and it comes through you. — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work. — Natalie Goldberg

If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy. — Natalie Goldberg

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate. — Natalie Goldberg

It is also hard to write about a city we just moved to; it's not yet in our body. — Natalie Goldberg

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself. — Natalie Goldberg

The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it. Then you fail yourself. — Natalie Goldberg

Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you. — Natalie Goldberg

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me ... I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life ... I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have. — Natalie Goldberg

This quiet place exists as we exist, here on the earth. It just is. That is where the best writing comes from and what we must connect with in order to write well. — Natalie Goldberg

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 ... — Natalie Goldberg

There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it. — Natalie Goldberg

We are searching for the core of our lives; our culture intuits that writing, that ancient activity, might be the pathway ... Awakening does not feed ego's needs and desires; it pulverizes the self. Our society couldn't knowingly bear such reduction, so we've tricked ourselves into the same path but call it writing. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them.Writing is still the wildest thing I know. — Natalie Goldberg

I never gained control of my mind - how do you dominate an ocean? - but I began to form a real relationship with it. Through writing and meditation I identified monkey mind, that constant critic, commentator, editor, general slug and pain-in-the-ass, the voice that says, "I can't do this, I'm bored, I hate myself, I'm no good, I can't sit still, who do I think I am?" I saw that most of my life had been spent following that voice as though it were God, telling me the real meaning of life - "Natalie, you can't write shit" - when, in fact, it was a mechanical contraption that all human minds contain. — Natalie Goldberg

THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise. — Natalie Goldberg

I hear people say they're going to write. I ask, when? They give me vague statements. Indefinite plans get dubious results. When we're concrete about our writing time, it alleviates that thin constant feeling of anxiety that writers have - we're barbecuing hot dogs, riding a bike, sailing out in the bay, shopping for shoes, even helping a sick friend, but somewhere nervously at the periphery of our perception we know we belong somewhere else - at our desk! — Natalie Goldberg

Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak. — Natalie Goldberg

It's much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms. — Natalie Goldberg

Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details. — Natalie Goldberg

Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind. — Natalie Goldberg

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart. — Natalie Goldberg

Sit down right now. Give me this moment. Write whatever's running through you. You might start with "this moment" and end up writing about the gardenia you wore at your wedding seven years ago. That's fine. Don't try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving. — Natalie Goldberg

Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin. — Natalie Goldberg

In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry. — Natalie Goldberg

If we see their (Navajo) lives and festivals as fantastic and our lives as ordinary, we come to writing with a sense of poverty. We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. — Natalie Goldberg

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write. — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

poems are small moments of enlightenment — Natalie Goldberg

It is our hope that writing releases us. Instead maybe it deepens the echo. We call out to our past and the call comes back. We are alone
and not alone. — Natalie Goldberg

I refilled the wineglass and took it with me for a nice long bubble bath, where I settled in with Ambrose's guide for low-voltage outdoor lighting.
It wasn't thrilling bubble-bath reading material, but I was impressed by his imagination. You wouldn't know from the writing that he'd never actually seen a low-voltage lighting system in someone's yard, much less installed one himself. His descriptions were clear, colorful, and written with authority. The inscription wasn't bad either: To Natalie, You're a high-voltage system as far as I am concerned. — Lee Goldberg

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them. — Natalie Goldberg

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world. — Natalie Goldberg

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing ... is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you ... You don't only listen to the person speaking to you across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck. — Natalie Goldberg

Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse. — Natalie Goldberg

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can't forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released. — Natalie Goldberg

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind ... 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. — Natalie Goldberg

It was my own human mind. I needed to understand it. Why? It's the writer's landscape. Imagine that a painter has that wild animal to capture on canvas: arresting its fangs, the raging color of its eyes, the blue of it's hump, the flash of its hoofs, the rugged shadow that it casts. We writers have that beast inside us: how we feel, think, hope, dream, perceive. — Natalie Goldberg

This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run ... That's how writing is too ... One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and nonaggressive. — Natalie Goldberg

Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think. — Natalie Goldberg

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing. — Natalie Goldberg

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write. — Natalie Goldberg

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life. — Natalie Goldberg

Own anything you want in your writing and then let it go. — Natalie Goldberg

After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth ... — Natalie Goldberg

And though death is howling at our backs and life is roaring at our faces, we can just begin to write, simply begin to write what we have to say. — Natalie Goldberg

Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind. — Natalie Goldberg

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure. — Natalie Goldberg

So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us. — Natalie Goldberg

Anything we fully do is an alone journey. — Natalie Goldberg

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. — Natalie Goldberg

We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don't have our own style. Don't worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing. — Natalie Goldberg

We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don't wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance. — Natalie Goldberg

When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind — Natalie Goldberg

I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page. — Natalie Goldberg

It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected.
Finally, you just do it because you happen to like it. — Natalie Goldberg

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell. — Natalie Goldberg

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters. — Natalie Goldberg

In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write. — Natalie Goldberg

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind. — Natalie Goldberg

Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I'm sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it's only for ten minutes. That's okay. To write feels better than all the excuses. — Natalie Goldberg

When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure. — Natalie Goldberg

When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing. (p.90) — Natalie Goldberg

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. — Natalie Goldberg

Go ahead; take Kant's PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSIC and get it to show what he is telling. We would all be a lot happier. — Natalie Goldberg