酷我-北美枫

[Champagne]

Thematic Review of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg


Writing Down the Bones is a collection of sixty-six writing lessons, one of which Natalie Goldberg gives is the basic unit of writing practice: the timed exercise, a kind of “free-writing” exercise. She recommends doing focused, disciplined, keeping-the-hand-moving exercises as a way of learning to cut through the writer's resistances or blocks. She suggests ten minute timed writing exercises as a warm-up activity, and the suggestion for these exercises is to use: I see.., I hear..., I feel..., I smell..., etc. Juicy feelings naturally flow deep inside the writer; in her view, all serious daring starts from within. On page eight, she recommends the basic writing instructions for aspiring writers:

1. Keep your hand moving. Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.

2. Don't cross out. That's editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.

3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.

4. Lose control.

5. Don't think. Don't get logical.

6. Go for the jugular. If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.

Practical writing instructions aside, Goldberg offers radically new perspectives about the “actual act of writing:” writing as spiritual practice; she encourages her readers to focuses more on the process, not result or meaning of writing. Her views on writing are highly informed by her personal experiences of learning and teaching writing and more importantly, by her study of Zen meditation. In her enlightening encounter with Zen master Katagiri Roshi, she unravels how writing as spiritual practice happens and explains how you really can develop your own approach to writing practice:

“When I was 26,I was sitting a lot of zazen, and I began trying to figure out how to write. I didn’t have any rules. I didn’t call it writing practice, but I just wrote and wrote. Then in 1976,I went to study writing with Allen Ginsberg for six weeks at the Naropa Institute. He brought together a lot of stuff about writing and its relationship to the mind, and I continued to pursue it after the course ended.

And then I started to time myself while I kept my hand moving as I observed my mind. I went deeper and deeper into it and noticed things, but I didn’t give the experience a special name. In this way I learned which practices helped me write, and which didn’t.

I did it this way for years before I met Katagiri Roshi. When I met him and began sitting with him, he said one day, 'Make writing your practice.' At the time I never listened to anything he said; I was so arrogant. I said, ‘Oh,that’s ridiculous, Roshi. I’m going to keep sitting.’ I thought he was trying to get rid of me; you know, like ‘Get out of here Natalie, we don’t want you in the zendo.’

So many years later, I finally began to understand what Roshi said. And it was actually in the writing of Writing Down the Bones that it all came together. There was a great “Ah.” About two years after the book was published I went to see him and I said to him, ‘Why did you tell me to make writing my practice?’ And he looked at me very nonchalantly and said, ‘Well, you liked to write, that’s why I told you.’ He understood where my passion was, where my energy was. So in other words, if you really want to be a runner but you think you should meditate, make running your practice and then go deeply into it at all levels.

But Roshi also said, ‘Ah, but it’s pretty good to sit too.’ So I also sat to keep myself honest, and to somehow develop my back. You know, my front was all energy. I explain it all in Bones – you have to have quiet peace at your back, otherwise you burn up.”

One key passage fully expresses her Zen-influenced views on writing is from the chapter entitled Artistic Stability:

"The problem is we think we exist. We think our words are permanent and solid and stamp us forever. That's not true. We write in the moment. Sometimes when I read poems at a reading to strangers, I realize they think those poems are me. They are not me, even if I speak in the 'I' person. They were my thoughts and my hand and the space and the emotions at that time of writing. Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh. That is how writing is. Instead of freezing us, it frees us. ... The power is always in the act of writing. Come back to that again and again and again. ... We constantly need new insights, visions. We don't exist in any solid form. There is no permanent truth you can corner...that will satisfy you forever. Don't identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you. They were a great moment going through you. A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture."

Goldberg's views on writing as spiritual practice is fully and perfectly embodied in the Buddhist way of making a sand mandala: once it has been built and its accompanying ceremonies and viewing are finished, it is systematically destroyed. The making and destroying of a sand mandala symbolise the transitory nature of things, surely including writing. As Natalie Goldberg emphasizes, "we write in the moment; every minute we change. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh. That is how writing is. The power is always in the act of writing."
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

Thematic Review of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg


Writing Down the Bones is a collection of sixty-six writing lessons, one of which Natalie Goldberg gives is the basic unit of writing practice: the timed exercise, a kind of “free-writing” exercise. She recommends doing focused, disciplined, keeping-the-hand-moving exercises as a way of learning to cut through the writer's resistances or blocks. She suggests ten minute timed writing exercises as a warm-up activity, and the suggestion for these exercises is to use: I see.., I hear..., I feel..., I smell..., etc. Juicy feelings naturally flow deep inside the writer; in her view, all serious daring starts from within. On page eight, she recommends the basic writing instructions for aspiring writers:

1. Keep your hand moving. Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.

2. Don't cross out. That's editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.

3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.

4. Lose control.

5. Don't think. Don't get logical.

6. Go for the jugular. If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.

Practical writing instructions aside, Goldberg offers radically new perspectives about the “actual act of writing:” writing as spiritual practice; she encourages her readers to focuses more on the process, not result or meaning of writing. Her views on writing are highly informed by her personal experiences of learning and teaching writing and more importantly, by her study of Zen meditation. In her enlightening encounter with Zen master Katagiri Roshi, she unravels how writing as spiritual practice happens and explains how you really can develop your own approach to writing practice:

“When I was 26,I was sitting a lot of zazen, and I began trying to figure out how to write. I didn’t have any rules. I didn’t call it writing practice, but I just wrote and wrote. Then in 1976,I went to study writing with Allen Ginsberg for six weeks at the Naropa Institute. He brought together a lot of stuff about writing and its relationship to the mind, and I continued to pursue it after the course ended.

And then I started to time myself while I kept my hand moving as I observed my mind. I went deeper and deeper into it and noticed things, but I didn’t give the experience a special name. In this way I learned which practices helped me write, and which didn’t.

I did it this way for years before I met Katagiri Roshi. When I met him and began sitting with him, he said one day, 'Make writing your practice.' At the time I never listened to anything he said; I was so arrogant. I said, ‘Oh,that’s ridiculous, Roshi. I’m going to keep sitting.’ I thought he was trying to get rid of me; you know, like ‘Get out of here Natalie, we don’t want you in the zendo.’

So many years later, I finally began to understand what Roshi said. And it was actually in the writing of Writing Down the Bones that it all came together. There was a great “Ah.” About two years after the book was published I went to see him and I said to him, ‘Why did you tell me to make writing my practice?’ And he looked at me very nonchalantly and said, ‘Well, you liked to write, that’s why I told you.’ He understood where my passion was, where my energy was. So in other words, if you really want to be a runner but you think you should meditate, make running your practice and then go deeply into it at all levels.

But Roshi also said, ‘Ah, but it’s pretty good to sit too.’ So I also sat to keep myself honest, and to somehow develop my back. You know, my front was all energy. I explain it all in Bones – you have to have quiet peace at your back, otherwise you burn up.”

One key passage fully expresses her Zen-influenced views on writing is from the chapter entitled Artistic Stability:

"The problem is we think we exist. We think our words are permanent and solid and stamp us forever. That's not true. We write in the moment. Sometimes when I read poems at a reading to strangers, I realize they think those poems are me. They are not me, even if I speak in the 'I' person. They were my thoughts and my hand and the space and the emotions at that time of writing. Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh. That is how writing is. Instead of freezing us, it frees us. ... The power is always in the act of writing. Come back to that again and again and again. ... We constantly need new insights, visions. We don't exist in any solid form. There is no permanent truth you can corner...that will satisfy you forever. Don't identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you. They were a great moment going through you. A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture."

Goldberg's views on writing as spiritual practice is fully and perfectly embodied in the Buddhist way of making a sand mandala: once it has been built and its accompanying ceremonies and viewing are finished, it is systematically destroyed. The making and destroying of a sand mandala symbolise the transitory nature of things, surely including writing. As Natalie Goldberg emphasizes, "we write in the moment; every minute we change. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh. That is how writing is. The power is always in the act of writing."
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[星子]

What I like this book is that she tells the true experience. It is not to educate you but to share with you.

I also like what she comments about the loneliness. We cannot get away from it, but we need to stand up with it.

She also mentions the purpose to write is not just writing, it is also bring back what you write to life. She believe each of us has beauty inside, each of us want to tell the truth, and we should bring it back and forth to make our world more meaningful.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

What I like this book is that she tells the true experience. It is not to educate you but to share with you.

I also like what she comments about the loneliness. We cannot get away from it, but we need to stand up with it.

She also mentions the purpose to write is not just writing, it is also bring back what you write to life. She believe each of us has beauty inside, each of us want to tell the truth, and we should bring it back and forth to make our world more meaningful.
_________________

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[北夜]

very interesting theory

[[FAFAFA]]

very interesting theory

[星子]

Great. Thank Eric and 北夜.

Sometimes I wonder if life is meaningful, then I may be upset. But now I think moment is more important, since we live in moment.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

Great. Thank Eric and 北夜.

Sometimes I wonder if life is meaningful, then I may be upset. But now I think moment is more important, since we live in moment.
_________________

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[Champagne]

[[Champagne]]

[星子]

Hi Champagne & Eric

Well said.
_________________

[[ANNA]]

Hi Champagne & Eric

Well said.
_________________