I was looking for books on writing recently when I happened to come across writing down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. I’m only halfway through it but I already learned quite a lot from it. It is a phenomenal book for writers. Learning from someone’s experiences is richer than mechanically cramming the techniques of a particular subject. Writing down the Bones is that kind of a book.
Natalie’s views on writing add so much value to one’s practice. I’m so looking forward to reading it completely and then re-read it.
By far, this book has opened up a few hidden doors for me. Out of all, I’ll give you the top five.
Natalie Goldberg’s Writing down the Bones
1. Find what feeds your writing
This is the first thing that was imprinted on my mind. Honestly, I talked about the same thing in my creative writing course, about having a creative outlet other than writing. And when I heard the same thing from Natalie, I felt so good. I felt I’m going in the right direction.
She said to find what feeds your writing. It was painting for her and so as to mine. She said it helps in observing the detail.
Now it can be different for different people. For some, it may be painting, and for some, it may be music. Find yours.
2. Precision Vs. Self-indulgence
In one of the chapters, she says “Don’t marry the fly.” By that, she meant don’t indulge too much in the detail. You might get lost. And if it gets too much, your reader’s focus will have digressed.
Quoting her example, imagine you are writing about a restaurant and there’s a fly. Now you can mention that fly, you can even love that fly, but don’t go marry it. Meaning, don’t talk about it more than what is necessary.
3. Teach to learn
You learn more while teaching. Natalie mentions that she learned more while teaching writing to her students. Teaching the same things over and over again helps us learn better. And I couldn’t agree more.
4. Use of qualifiers
In one chapter, Natalie talks about how women use a lot of qualifiers like, isn’t it? don’t you think? etc… Because they need to be validated. Someone to conform to their statements. That was such a lesson for me. I did that, too. If you go back and look at my earlier blog posts, I did use qualifiers a lot. And if you look at this article, no qualifiers whatsoever.
Your write-ups definitely look a lot better and stronger without those qualifiers.
5. 1+1= Mercedes-Benz
Natalie Goldberg says to look beyond logic. We are used to 1+1=2 and that is true, of course. But when you are a writer, it is important to forget about logic sometimes. You have to think of new possibilities.
Such amazing lessons.
I’ll keep listening to this audiobook while you go back and check my earlier articles for those qualifiers. Haha.
By the way, if you want to read Writing down the Bones, try the audiobook on Audible. You can listen to two different Natalies, the 36-year-old Natalie when she first wrote the book and the present 50-year-old Natalie.
Cheers,
Nikki.
Thanks for reading