Customer Reviews

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

5 star:		(119)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Natalie Goldberg's insights about writing as a spirtual practice are just as valid today as they were in 1986 when this book was first published. Her suggestions to writers work, both for beginning writers and for writers who depend on words in order to make a living. I recommend this book to the emerging writers I mentor as a must-have reference second only to a good dictionary.

As a professional writer who has written over 20 books and 500 magazine articles, I've given Writing Down the Bones away several times after mistakenly deciding that I'd outgrown it. Just as often I've had to go out and buy another copy to remind myself that there's more to the writing life than rejections, and royalties. Every time I reread it, I find something new. Last year I read Goldberg's memoir, Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, which provides insights about how she came to her beliefs about writing and spirituality. I suggest reading both books.

A few months ago, around the time when I bought Goldberg's 'Writing Down the Bones', I was just starting to consider myself a serious writer. At first, I was attracted to Goldberg's warm and friendly voice and I felt like a member of her free-spirited writing posse, along for the magic carpet ride, venturing to far away cafes. I once thought of this book in the same frame of mind that so many kind, uncritical reviewers here have; as a kind of 'writer's bible.' Now that I am a few months older and wiser, I am able to see that the book is just a string of well-meaning encouragements that when putting pen-to-paper, are not as instrumental and helpful as you might think. One good thing happened as a result of my reading this book; I have made writing a practice, using notebooks as Natalie suggested.

The best, and if I may say, most fruitful and promising path to good writing is reading the words of those who have walked before us. Read and absorb the styles of others, THEN let the pen write directly and honestly from your heart. Write your own 'writer's bible.'

I align myself more with the negative reviews of this book. It's easy to get caught up in some of the philosophical warm-fuzzy rhetoric of Ms. Goldberg. Akin to watching Oprah pull at an audience's heartstrings, Ms. Goldberg pulls readers in with story after story trumpeting the same message of writing from the heart. The initial reaction is to feel that there's nothing to question about what Ms. Goldberg says.

When I purchased the book, I saw nothing to indicate that it was specific to one particular form of writing, but after reading it, I feel that the author speaks much more to poetry than other forms of writing. The author on several occasions admonishes us to write in the moment and not dwell on ideas we've had in the past. She relates an experience of one student who had a fully-formed idea while out jogging but couldn't reproduce it when s/he got home to the blank page. Goldberg went into a spiel about how we should just let go of those thoughts that are not inspired or conceived in the moment that we sit down to write. That's where I have a fundamental disagreement with her and feel her philosophy becomes almost destructive to new writers. Perhaps poetry functions that way. Perhaps someone has to have that spontaneous quality about their work in order for it to be fresh and exciting. I don't know. I'm not a poet. However, for novels, short stories, and longer works, you would be a fool to let great ideas get away. Personally, I like to let some of those ideas percolate for weeks and even years. Yes, we mature and our perspectives change, but in a lot of cases that only means that we can approach a subject in a different way as we grow older. It doesn't make the subject any better or worse to write about.

Bottom line: I came away from the book with mixed feelings. In my opinion she crossed over the line of reason too often in the book to put forth her spiritual views. It was like a one day seminar that gets you pumped up, but then you get home and review your notes, and realize, sadly, that it was mainly hype with very little substance. I can summarize her tome with three bullet points: Be true to thine ownself. Always observe the world around you. Make writing a habit in your life.

When I took a creative writing course a few years ago, Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" was a required text. It was so good I couldn't put it down.

Natalie points out that all beginning writers are controlled by their "inner censor" and therefore write what they think other people want to hear, or they put a false face on their writing. Natalie does indeed "free the writer within," by giving us permission to "just write sh--" (her words,not mine). The gist of the book is this: just write. Go for volume, not quality. The quality will come as you gain experience and lose your inhibitions. Natalie says everything you write, not just the good stuff but the bad as well, creates a "compost heap of the mind." It stays in your subconscious and mellows and ripens, ready to fertilize your skills and imagination for future writing projects. I actually put Natalie's suggestions into practice and kept a writer's journal for several years (and still do), and wrote thousands of words. I feel that my writing skills did indeed improve and even shine.

Natalie also discusses some things to try, like writing in different places, and discusses useful topics like metaphor and simile. Her book is not a technical manual, but rather an easy read, a personal insight into the joy and freedom from uninhibited writing. I always recommend this book first to anyone who expresses an interest in learning to write.

I bought this book on recommendations from other writers and journal keepers, but I was openly apprehensive that it would be just another "you can do it" or worse another pontification on the divine art of writing. I couldn't have been more wrong!

Of all the how-to writing books I have read, all the while looking for that one filled with honest, practical advice to help shake loose my creativity free from the confines of English class rules and order, this is the best one out there. Natalie starts out telling you that it isn't an ordered process that fuels creativity. She lets you know up front that all those rules and "regulations" that you learned in every English class you ever took don't apply in real creativity.

She takes you step by step, holding your hand thruout, thru a creative storm complete with exercises designed to frighten and enlighten. In the end you realize that you are, indeed, a creative person when not confined to the traditional definitions of creativity and art.

I felt I could do anything, write anything, and create anything when I was done with this book. I read it straight thru in an afternoon and then went back over the period of a week and did the exercises. I still go back, months later, re-working the exercises, reading favourite chapters, and reminding myself of the wonderful wellspring of creativity in all of us.

I highly recommend this book to anyone frustrated with the traditional "this is how to be creative" books that so many of us have trudged thru in desperate hopes of finding a single grain of enlightenment. Natalie gives it to you in page after page of insight, comfort, and freedom. You won't be disappointed - unless, of course, you really do like all those ridiculous rules and regulations.

Truly this book is going to help every single aspiring author to free the writer within. After you read it, you will want to start writing right away, and I have started doing the exercises before I even finished the book. Ms. Goldberg really has a way of reaching into your fears and anxietys about getting those words on paper, and she is a very real person with some very solid advice. A Buddhist herself, she brings some Zen wisdom into the book also, which is meaningful and helps her to succeed in her attempt to get you to pick up that pen and go! She is successful at giving you the "permission" you need and telling you how to begin. Authors suffering from "writer's block" will even find this book helpful. Those who never had an interest in writing will find they do after reading this. It's informative, there is humor, there is much straight talk, and best of all for me, it comes in an itty bitty pocket size wonder. Hurry up and get this one before word gets out and it sells out everywhere!

After years of being told "You have to write a book," I began taking my nagging friends seriously. I bought a few books on the writing process, this being one of them. And then I started writing. Three years later, my memoir, BABY CATCHER, was published by Scribner.
I'm not saying Natalie Goldberg can turn everyone into a published writer. But what I AM saying is that her book can help anyone with the most difficult part of writing: sitting down and actually applying fingers to keyboard. The book has been of concrete and serious help to bazillions of writers. But it. Then apply butt to chair seat and fingers to keyboard, and write. And write. And write.

Writing Down the Bones is not about the technical aspects of writing craft, it's about a philosophy to express what's inside you.

Her discussion about the need to eliminate self-censorship is very welcome. As are her exercises in brainstorming and beginnings. But she stresses the lifestyle of writing and the process of emotional catharsis over the end result. She seems to think that being interested in a good end product is to strive solely for success and popularity. My response is to say that while writing is worthwhile in itself, it is also to a purpose: it relates a story. The original impetus of expression must find the reader.

Writing Down the Bones is a great motivational work. If you're struggling with writers block, this book will definitely help you out. Ms. Goldberg is feisty -- a little hokey, yes, but fun. Some of her insights are genuinely enlightening.

Overall a good book. It will help you find and explore the reasons why you write.

The main message of this book is that if you are alive, you can write. Which is one of these zen-like truths that it is easy to understand, but damnably difficult to learn to use in practice.
Ms. Goldberg combines two great scholastic traditions in this book: the jewish and the zen buddhist. She tells us how essential it is to observe and to feel, and then how to just let the urge to write flow trhough you.
As with t'ai ch'i and meditation so it is with writing: we have to relearn a lot, and to go back to the simplistic.
It is a book to read, and tyhen keep at your side to glance in ever so often.

My dad gave me this book many years ago. He always had such faith in my writing ability, and he would mail me articles, books, reviews and such all the time.

Thanks to him, I have many writing books -- inspirational, how-to, and so on. This is the only one that is dog-eared and has food and coffee stains on many pages.

I noted that one reviewer thought it was really only a book for those who write poetry. I couldn't disagree more -- I have never written poetry, don't plan on it, and actually don't particularly like it. I mostly write non-fiction articles, and I LOVE the author's philosophy!

I do my research and interviews, read-read-read about whatever subject it is I want to write about, and then when it's time to sit down and write -- I just let it flow. I don't stop to think about it -- I just GO with it. My writing has improved so much this way! I used to try to outline and plan -- and my writing was disastrous. I did not listen to my instincts, which told me that my very best writing was always, without exception, the kind that happened with no planning at all.

If you aren't afraid to write without a "plan", get this book. Even if you DO think you need a plan, get this book. Try a different way of writing, and you just might be surprised at the REAL writer within you, dying to get out and express herself (or himself)!