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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: 77
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Really
Maybe
Seed
Make
Practice
Page
Doesn
Seeds
True
Recognize
Book
Pages
Whole
Singing
Writing
Honor
Thing
Trust
Screaming

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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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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
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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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In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.
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Anything we fully do is an alone journey.
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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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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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This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
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Indefinite plans get dubious results.
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Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
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In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.
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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 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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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
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Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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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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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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