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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 job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
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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.
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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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Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.
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Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it
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The first thing is how awful cancer was, the experience. When you first go through it, you're just trying to survive. But when I wrote about it, I really digested it. It was unbearable but I had practice behind me.
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Creativity is no big deal.
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I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life.
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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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Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
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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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Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.
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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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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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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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poems are small moments of enlightenment
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
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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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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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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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