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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
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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Break
Write
Encourage
Firsts
Structure
First
Students
Writing
Stay
Things
Lose
Loses
Control
More quotes by 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.
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After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.
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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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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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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
Natalie Goldberg
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
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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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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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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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Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.
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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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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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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
Natalie Goldberg
We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
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.
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When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous.
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Creativity is no big deal.
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Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
Natalie Goldberg
