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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Experience
Fourteen
Memoir
Cancer
Wrote
Months

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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.
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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 still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
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The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
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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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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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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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This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.
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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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It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.
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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
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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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When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)
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So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
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I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
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Creativity is no big deal.
Natalie Goldberg
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You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.
Natalie Goldberg
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When you are present, the world is truly alive.
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