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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Think
Control
Thinking
Hand
Wherein
Moving
Observation
Keep
Discover
Hands
Rules
Many
Sex
Writing
Lose
Good
Loses

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Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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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.
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Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth.
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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.
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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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It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it.
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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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One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.
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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
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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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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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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.
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We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
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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.
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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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First thoughts have tremendous energy. 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.
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