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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.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Wrote
Lived
Personal
Two
Backed
Writing
Essays
Life
Twenty
Twenties
Cancer

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I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
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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.
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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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Literature gives us the great gift of the present moment.
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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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I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
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The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter the act of writing does.
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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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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 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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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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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
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Every moment is enormous and it is all we have.
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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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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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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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In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.
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I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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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.
Natalie Goldberg