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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
Thinking
Hand
Wherein
Moving
Observation
Keep
Discover
Hands
Rules
Many
Sex
Writing
Lose
Good
Loses
Think
Control

More quotes by Natalie Goldberg

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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.
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Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
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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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Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.
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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.
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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.
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I have students that I tell, If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around. The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.
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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
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Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth.
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[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.
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.
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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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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
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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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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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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
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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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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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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.
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