Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within

by Natalie Goldberg

  Don’t Use Writing to Get Love

  ABOUT FIVE YEARS ago a friend was mugged on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She told me later that she threw up her arms and immediately yelled, “Don’t kill me, I’m a writer!” “How odd,” I thought at the time. “Why did she think that would save her?”

  Writers get confused. We think writing gives us an excuse for being alive. We forget that being alive is unconditional and that life and writing are two separate entities. Often we use writing as a way to receive notice, attention, love. “See what I wrote. I must be a good person.” We are good people before we ever write a word.

  A few years ago, after every reading I gave, no matter how well everyone appreciated my work, I felt lonely and terrible. I blamed it on my writing. It wasn’t my work that was the problem. I was going through a divorce and had very low self-esteem. I needed support—not my poetry. I confused the two. I forgot that I am not the poem. The poems were healthy; I wasn’t. I needed care. From then on I always invited a friend to be my “date” at public events. I told the friend that as soon as I was finished reading, “Come right up to me, hug me, tell me how beautiful I looked and how wonderful I am. I don’t care if I totally bombed out that night. Tell me I am wonderful.” A week later I can take a close look at my performance. That night, “Tell me I’m wonderful.”

  As writers we are always seeking support. First we should notice that we are already supported every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support. There is the sunlight coming through the window and the silence of the morning. Begin from these. Then turn to face a friend and feel how good it is when she says, “I love your work.” Believe her as you believe the floor will hold you up, the chair will let you sit.

  I had a student who sent me two short stories to read, and then the following week we had an hourlong conference. I hadn’t worked with her in a year and a half, and I was impressed by her progress. I told her, “The stories are complete, touching, very beautiful.” I began to notice about twenty minutes into the conference that she was becoming angry. “I think you are charging me too much.” What she was really saying was, “You haven’t done your work. You didn’t spend time ripping them apart. I didn’t come here to hear compliments. These couldn’t possibly be so good. You are exaggerating.” “Listen, you have to believe me. This is terrific work. It’s ready for publication.” I suggested she send it out. Within a month one of the stories was accepted by a very fine magazine. Not only was she paid, but they told her that they had recently decided to stop publishing short stories, but “This was so good, we changed our minds.”

  We want honest support and encouragement. When we receive it, we don’t believe it, but we are quick to accept criticism to reinforce our deepest beliefs that, in truth, we are no good and not really writers. My ex-husband used to say to me, “You look ugly. Aah, now that I have your attention . . .” He said when he complimented me, I never heard him, but as soon as he said something negative, I perked right up.

  Students say to me, “Well, you’re just the teacher. You have to say something positive.” Friends say, “Well, you’re just my friend. You already like me.” Stop! Really stop when someone is complimenting you. Even if it’s painful and you are not used to it, just keep breathing, listen, and let yourself take it in. Feel how good it is. Build up a tolerance for positive, honest support.

  What Are Your Deep Dreams?

  I ASKED MY Sunday-night group (many of whom had been doing practice writing for three years), “Where do you want to go with writing? You have this strong creative voice; you’ve been able to separate out the creator and editor. What do you want to do with it?”

  There comes a time to shape and direct the force we have learned. I asked them, “What are your deep dreams? Write for five minutes.” Many of us don’t know, don’t recognize, avoid our deep dreams. When we write for five, ten minutes we are forced to put down wishes that float around in our mind and that we might not pay attention to. It is an opportunity to write down, without thinking, wishes at the periphery of our perceptions.

  Reread them. Start to take your dreams and wishes seriously. If you’re not sure, if you honestly don’t know what you want to do, start wishing for a direction, for your way to appear.

  When I was in Israel last year, I walked the streets of Jerusalem wondering what other kind of writing I should do. I was finishing my second manuscript of poetry, Top of My Lungs, and knew that I needed something, some new form. Lots of poets back in the Twin Cities were writing novels. Judith Guest’s success with Ordinary People, her first novel, spurred everyone on (she lives in Edina, Minnesota). I kept saying to myself, “Natalie, do you want to write a novel?” The answer was clearly “No!” There was some comfort in that, in knowing what I didn’t want. But I was worried. I had visions of my end, lying in the gutter, clutching a few last poems in my hand and, with my last breath, begging someone to read them.

  There’s a wonderful New Yorker cartoon of a man standing in front of passengers on a plane with a rifle and a notebook in his hands, saying, “Now, sit still. No one is going to be hurt. I just want you to listen to a few of my poems.” Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.

  A friend who is a poet, now writing a mystery novel, suggested I write this book. I remembered that I had started it five years ago. The time wasn’t right then, but like our obsessions, our dreams do reoccur. We might as well pay attention to them and act on them. It is a way to penetrate into our lives; otherwise we might drift with our dreams forever.

  Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too—going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico—and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them.

  Syntax

  TRY THIS. Take one of your most boring pieces of writing and choose from it three or four consecutive lines or sentences and write them at the top of a blank piece of paper.

  I can’t write because I’m an ice cube and my mouth goes dry and there’s nothing to say and I’d rather eat ice cream.

  Okay. See each one of those words simply as wooden blocks, all the same size and color. No noun or verb has any more value than the, a, and. Everything is equal. Now for about a third of a page scramble them up as though you were just moving wooden blocks around. Don’t try to make any sense of what you write down. Your mind will keep trying to construct something. Hold back that urge, relax, and mindlessly write down the words. You will have to repeat words to fill a third of a page.

  Write I’m an mouth rather cream say eat ice and nothing dry I an write rather say and my goes cube because an there’s I’d to dry goes write and mouth cream to I’d rather dry cube I’m an write I and nothing say goes an can’t because nothing rather I’d dry to and say cream goes ice rather to my cube nothing there’s say.

  Now, if you would like, arbitrarily put in a few periods, a question mark, maybe an exclamation mark, colons, or semicolons. Do all of this without thinking, without trying to make any sense. Just for fun.

  Write I’m an mouth rather cream. Say eat ice and nothing dry! I an write rather say and; my goes cube because an there’s. I’d to dry goes write and mouth cream to. I’d rather. Dry cube I’m an write I and nothing say goes. An can’t because nothing rather; I’d dry to and say cream goes ice. Rather to my cube nothing there’s say?

  Now read it aloud as though it were saying something. Your voice should have inflection and expression. You might try reading it in an angry voice, an exuberant, sad, whining, petulant, or demanding voice, to help you get into it.

  What have we done? Our language is usually locked into a sentence syntax of
subject/verb/directobject. There is a subject acting on an object. “I see the dog”—with this sentence structure, “I” is the center of the universe. We forget in our language structure that while “I” looks at “the dog,” “the dog” is simultaneously looking at us. It is interesting to note that in the Japanese language the sentence would say, “I dog seeing.” There is an exchange or interaction rather than a subject acting on an object.

  We think in sentences, and the way we think is the way we see. If we think in the structure subject/verb/ direct-object, then that is how we form our world. By cracking open that syntax, we release energy and are able to see the world afresh and from a new angle. We stop being so chauvinistic as Homo sapiens. Other beings besides human beings matter on the earth: ants have their own cities; dogs have their own lives; cats are always busy rehearsing for a nap; plants breathe, trees have a longer life span than we do. It is true that we can have a sentence with a dog or cat or a fly as the subject—“The dog sees the cat”—but still there is the pattern of self-centeredness and egocentricity built into the very structure of our language. It is a terrible burden to have to be master. We are not ruling the world. It is an illusion, and the illusion of our syntax structure perpetuates it.

  Katagiri Roshi used to say: “Have kind consideration for all sentient beings.” Once I asked him, “What are sentient beings anyway? Are they things that feel?” He told me that we have to be kind even to the chair, the air, the paper, and the street. That’s how big and accepting our minds have to become. When Buddha reached enlightenment under the bodhi tree, he said: “I am now enlightened with all beings.” He didn’t say: “I am enlightened and you’re not!” or “I see enlightenment” as though he were separate from it.

  This does not mean that from now on we should remain immobilized because we are afraid of offending the rug below our feet or accidentally jolting a glass. It does not mean that we should not use our syntax structure because it is wrong. Only once you have done this exercise, though you probably will go back to sentences, there is a crack, a place where the wind of energy can fly through you. Though “I eat an artichoke” sounds sensible and people will think you are sane, you now know that behind that syntax structure, the artichoke happens to also be eating you and changing you forever, especially if you dip it in garlic-butter sauce and if you totally let the artichoke leaf taste your tongue! The more you are aware of the syntax you move, see, and write in, the better control you have and the more you can step out of it when you need to. Actually, by breaking open syntax, you often get closer to the truth of what you need to say.

  Here are some examples of poems taken from Shout, Applaud, a collection of poems written at Norhaven, a residence for women who are mentally retarded.5 These women were never solidly indoctrinated in English-language syntax, so these poems are good examples of what can be created outside of it. Also they are fresh in another way: they are full of surprise—because you had breakfast yesterday doesn’t mean it isn’t amazing to eat eggs today!

  Give Me a White

  BY MARION PINSKI

  I love white

  to write

  to write my name.

  Please give Marion

  Pinski a white.

  I like to white

  because of write my name, I could.

  I know how to spell it

  correct.

  I want white to write

  my name with.

  I like to write my name.

  I’d like white, now.

  I asked in a nice way.

  I love white, I do.

  To write, to write

  my name, yes.

  I got my own money, I do.

  Trying to.

  Maple Leaf

  BY BETTY FREEMAN

  That I dream the lady does to be young

  and to be in her pretty red Christmas ball.

  Her dress looks beautiful like a swan.

  The swan floats with his thin white feathers

  when his soft snow head

  floats under to be like snow again.

  Then I like to be a woman like the one,

  to be with a long wing.

  The Stone and I

  BY BEVERLY OPSE

  On my table lies a stone.

  On the stone lies a glass of water.

  The water is black with dirt.

  The dirt is dry and dusty.

  I’d invite a cabbage to eat.

  The cabbage is very pleased.

  It likes the rock

  because it doesn’t move.

  Everybody

  BY SHIRLEY NIELSON

  I was wearing a blue

  coat. It was cabbage and wieners.

  They were big cooked wieners,

  the smell was cabbage

  ah delicious smell

  of cabbage out not summer noise was

  running water in the kitchen somewhere.

  Nervously Sipping Wine

  RUSSELL EDSON READ at the University of Minnesota several years ago. He said that he sits down at his typewriter and writes about ten different short pieces at one session. He then comes back later to reread them. Maybe one out of the ten is successful and he keeps that one. He said that if a good first line comes to him, the rest of the piece usually works. Here are some of his first lines:6

  “A man wants an aeroplane to like him.”

  “A rat wanted to put its tail in an old woman’s vagina. . . .”

  “If a scientist had bred pigeons the size of horses . . .”

  “A beloved duck gets cooked by mistake.”

  “A man having to do with an éclair heard his mother breaking something, and figured it must be his father.”

  “A husband and wife discover that their children are fakes.”

  “Identical twin old men take turns at being alive.”

  Here are two complete pieces:

  Sautéing

  As a man sautéed his hat he was thinking of how his mother used to sauté his father’s hat, and how grandmother used to sauté grandfather’s hat.

  Some garlic and wine and it doesn’t taste like hat at all, it tastes like underwear. . . .

  And as he sautéed his hat he thought of his mother sautéing his father’s hat, and grandmother sautéing grandfather’s hat, and wished he had somehow gotten married so he’d have someone to sauté his hat; sautéing is such a lonely thing. . . .

  With Sincerest Regrets

  Like a white snail the toilet slides into the living room, demanding to be loved.

  It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets.

  In the book of the heart there is no mention made of plumbing.

  And though we have spent our intimacy many times with you, you belong to an unfortunate reference, which we would rather not embrace. . . .

  The toilet slides out of the living room like a white snail, flushing with grief. . . .

  After the reading, there was the usual wine-and-cheese reception in an ugly, large classroom. I clearly remember Russell Edson in a suit sitting alone across the room. All the students, faculty, and poets stood around the crackers and thin orange cheese slices at the opposite end of the room nervously sipping wine and discussing his work. Few of us approached him. Though we all laughed during the reading, he touched on naked truths in us all and we were uncomfortable.

  Try sitting at your typewriter and without thinking begin to write Russell Edson–type pieces. This means letting go and allowing the elm in your front yard to pick itself up and walk over to Iowa. Try for good, strong first sentences. You might want to take the first half of your sentence from a newspaper article and finish the sentence with an ingredient listed in a cookbook. Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

  Don’t Tell, but Show

  THERE’S AN OLD adage in writing: “Don’t tell, but show.” What does this actually mean? It means don’t tell us about anger (or any of those big words like hone
sty, truth, hate, love, sorrow, life, justice, etc.); show us what made you angry. We will read it and feel angry. Don’t tell readers what to feel. Show them the situation, and that feeling will awaken in them.

  Writing is not psychology. We do not talk “about” feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader’s hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.

  When you are present at the birth of a child you may find yourself weeping and singing. Describe what you see: the mother’s face, the rush of energy when the baby finally enters the world after many attempts, the husband breathing with his wife, applying a wet washcloth to her forehead. The reader will understand without your ever having to discuss the nature of life.

  When you write, stay in direct connection with the senses and what you are writing about. If you are writing from first thoughts—the way your mind first flashes on something before second and third thoughts take over and comment, criticize, and evaluate—you don’t have to worry. First thoughts are the mind reflecting experiences—as close as a human being can get in words to the sunset, the birth, the bobby pin, the crocus. We can’t always stay with first thoughts, but it is good to know about them. They can easily teach us how to step out of the way and use words like a mirror to reflect the pictures.