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Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make it so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, or drop a jar of applesauce.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Fall
Jars
Matter
Orderly
Right
Drop
Trying
Legs
Make
Lose
Love
Loses
Life
Middle
Dies

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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.
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I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.
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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
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The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you're able to let life meet life. If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down.
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This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
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The problem is we think we exist.
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Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
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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.
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I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
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I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.
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We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
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We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.
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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.
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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.
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