“I don’t write at night,” I told my friend as we left the Natalie Goldberg book signing a while back. But I was buzzed, high, tripping on having met Natalie Goldberg, the famous writing teacher and author of Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind, Thunder and Lightening, The Great Failure, and more.
“What Would Natalie Say?”
Yeah, I can hear her in my head now, just like I do with all the teachers I adore. I once totally gave up some jealousy I had been hanging onto for 5 years, just because I asked, “What Would Steven Say?” I’m sure the Anti-Guru hates that, and Natalie proably will, too. But they can just deal. Steven does and Natalie lives in New Mexico.
I know I am a teacher’s pet, a suck up and a total fan when it comes to teachers I love.
If Natalie Goldberg can stand in front of a room and tell us how she found herself at the end of a book tour, in a hotel, barely able to remember her name or where she was after all that traveling, petting a book, then I can ask “What Would Natalie Say?” God knows I’ve petted a lot of books myself. (Lately, World Without End by Ken Follet. Go to the bookstore and pet the pages of the hardcover copy and you’ll see why.)
I try not to be obsequious, but I fall totally in love with my teachers. Some would say it’s because words are my favorite love language. Unless you are talking to me, I do not know you love me.
Natalie said so many priceless things tonight. The shortest and pithiest was , “Go!”
That was always preceded by brief, outlandish instructions on a topic for writing practice. If you want to know what I mean, read Old Friend From Far Away. Go!
“I don’t write at night.”
“What Would Natalie Say?”
She’d say, “Talk about how you never write at night. 10 minutes. Go!”
Taskmistress.
That’s okay. That’s why we love her. I could not think of anything to ask that she had not already answered in her books. I don’t know if that’s good or bad and what’s the difference anyways? In fact, she cut most questioners off with “I know what you’re going to say” and proceeded to answer their question . . . correctly. Or to tell us where she answers that and in which book.
Jesus, if I’d been writing for 20-odd years, about writing . . . well, I don’t know, but she has earned that right. She can interrupt me anytime. But I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to ask about memoirs with incest in them besides hers in The Great Failure, but I can find those on my own.
She said, “I lost the whole Zen community over that one.” She went on to say it was painful and that she came through it as her own authority.
Somewhere in there she mentioned the phrase “loving what is,” and “inquiry,” and made me wonder if she’s a student of The Work of Byron Katie. I don’t know. She talked about how through writing and through reading difficult books, we grow up. She talked about how a book can kill us.
Do you know that it was Natalie, and the writing practice she designed and popularized that got me writing these blogs? Go!
That and Tama Kieves, who offers supportive writing practice at her Freewriting Fridays in Denver, Colorado. Only with her, it’s “20 minutes. Go!”
God, you’d think they had the same mother. Oh, wait. They do. In a sense. They’re both of Jewish heritage. Hmm.
I picture their potty training, their mothers looking at them on the toilet, “5 minutes. Go!”
Here, from page 238 of Old Friend From Far Away:
“Tell me what is your anchor, what you trust and can come home to over and over in your writing? Go. 10 minutes.”
It’s 10:15 at night.
I’m writing.
I’m nervous about my upcoming move, but not that nervous.
What would Natalie say?
“Go!”
Love, Ann
Quotes from Natalie’s Book Signing Talk:
“I don’t use the word spiritual. I practice.”
“When people are in denial, they stay in denial. They’re not going to come out and read your book.”
“Build a spine.”
“You have to be willing to be disturbed to be a writer.”
“Cut through that. It doeesn’t have to do with other people’s needs. It has to do with how you live your life.”
Ann's Tale 