Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg

The heat is not distracted, thinking, “Oh, I wanted it to be a chocolate cake, not a pound cake.” You don’t think as you write, “Oh, I don’t like my life, I should have been born in Illinois.” You don’t think. You accept what is and put down its truth. Katagiri Roshi has said: “Literature will tell you what life is, but it won’t tell you how to get out of it.”
    Ovens can be very cantankerous sometimes, and you might have to learn ways to turn your heat on. Timing your writing adds pressure and helps to heat things up and blast through the internal censor. Also, keeping your hand moving and not stopping add to the heat, so a beautiful cake may rise out of the mixture of your daily details. If you find yourself checking the clock too much as you write, say to yourself you are going to keep writing until three (or four or five) pages, both sides, are filled or until the cake is baked, however long that takes. And you are never sure once the heat begins whether you will get a devil’s food or an angel food cake. There are no guarantees; don’t worry. They’re both good to eat.
    There are people who try to use heat only, without ingredients, to make a cake. The heat is cozy and feels good, but when you’re done, there’s not much there for anyone else to eat. That’s usually abstract writing: we get a sense there is great warmth there, but we have nothing to bite into. If you use details, you become better skilled at conveying your ecstasy or sorrow. So while you fly around in the heat of the oven, bring in the batter in the pan so we know exactly what your feelings taste like, so we may be a gourmet of them: “Oh, it’s a pound cake, a brownie, a light lemon soufflé.” That is what her feelings feel like. Not “It was great, it was great!” Yes, it was great, but how great? Give us the flavor. In other words, use details. They are the basic unit of writing.
    And in using them, you are not only baking cakes and buzzing around the oven. In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not just staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.

 
    Living Twice
     
    W RITERS LIVE TWICE. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.
    In a rainstorm, everyone quickly runs down the street with umbrellas, raincoats, newspapers over their heads. Writers go back outside in the rain with a notebook in front of them and a pen in hand. They look at the puddles, watch them fill, watch the rain splash in them. You can say a writer practices being dumb. Only a dummy would stand out in the rain and watch a puddle. If you’re smart, you get in out of the rain so you won’t catch cold, and you have health insurance, in case you get sick. If you’re dumb, you are more interested in the puddle than in your security and insurance or in getting to work on time.
    You’re more interested, finally, in living life again in your writing than in making money. Now, let’s understand—writers do like money; artists, contrary to popular belief, do like to eat. It’s only that money isn’t the driving force. I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work. Think of it. Employers pay salaries for time. That is the basic commodity that human beings have that is valuable. We exchange our time in life for money. Writers stay with the first step—their time—and feel it is valuable even before they get money for it. They hold on to it and aren’t so eager to sell it. It’s like inheriting land from your family. It’s always been in your family: they