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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Thing
Trust
Screaming
Really
Maybe
Seed
Make
Practice
Page
Doesn
Seeds
True
Recognize
Book
Pages
Whole
Singing
Writing
Honor

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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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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.
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You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
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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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I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
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Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.
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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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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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The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.
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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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If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.
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While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
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Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
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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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If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
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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.
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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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I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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