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Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.

Natalie Goldberg

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Natalie Goldberg
Age: 77
Born: 1948
Born: January 4
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Even
Long
Really
Circumstances
Knew
Practice
Hard

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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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When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.
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I came out with a book called The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. It's a book that describes how writing is a practice and how my teaching is part of that practice. I direct the writing and create books but underneath, there's always the river of practice happening. No good, no bad. Just do it.
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Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
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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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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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Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.
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Creativity is no big deal.
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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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In the end, you have to just sit down, shut up, and write.
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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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When you write, don't say, I'm going to write a poem. That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself say, I am free to write the worst junk in the world.
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Writing is not a McDonald's Hamburger.
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Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
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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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You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
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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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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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Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.
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Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
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