How Do We Even Start? (Building Your Craft Classics Collection)
When you’re building your collection of craft books, it’s good to cover lots of bases. Last time, we looked at George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. This book took us on a fantastic journey into the heart of the short story and helped demystify many terms of writing craft.
Now let’s look at another craft classic that, as a writing coach, I believe should be on every writer’s shelf. A book that brings us to the essence, to the absolute ground zero of writing. A book that embraces the question of how do we face the page or computer screen. How do we muster up the courage to sit down with our own minds and trust ourselves and write. And how do we even start?
This book, which has inspired countless writers since it was first published by Shambhala Publications in 1986, is Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. This Craft Classic teaches you how to free yourself to sit down and write. And Goldberg also teaches you how to live a beautiful and inspired life.
On a Mountain in the Catskills, I Learn About Monkey Mind and Discover Goldberg’s Book
One summer when I was living in New York City I had writer’s block. I was also reading a lot of books on Zen, and I decided that getting up into the mountains might help me concentrate better. I called a Zen monastery whose number was printed in the back of one of the books I had been reading and tried to convince them to let me come.
“Yeah, you want to write here, and you’d love being in the mountains. But do you have any interest in Zen? Do you even know what Zazen is?” I could hear the monk’s scowl through the phone. Zazen is the seated form of Zen meditation that they do in Zen monasteries. I knew that much but not all that much more. Even so, I signed up for a one-month residency.
The first week was exhausting, rising so early to get to the meditation hall. Sitting Zazen on my black cushion at 4:00 AM, my mind wouldn’t calm down. I found it hard to focus on my breath. Just count your breath from one to ten…yeah right. I couldn’t get to three before a rush of thoughts derailed my efforts. And I couldn’t believe the thoughts I was having. They hardly made any sense. Nothing poetic or brilliant there, so who was I to think I could write, let alone do Zazen in a monastery…
Monkey Mind
At the weekend breakfast at the Abbot’s house, as the fog lifted off majestic Mount Tremper, a novice monk came and sat next to me on the porch.
“How’s your first week going?”
“It’s amazing here,” I said, gesturing to the mountain that was now bathed in morning light. “But wow, I am so surprised that I’m having trouble concentrating when we meditate. My mind is all over the place.”
“Oh yeah, monkey mind.”
“Monkey mind? That’s it!” This wise novice had nailed it. “You’re so brilliant to come up with a term like that. That’s exactly what my mind feels like! A bunch of monkeys jumping around!”
The novice laughed, “Oh no, that isn’t my term. That term ‘monkey mind’ stretches all the way back to early Chinese writing from the later Qin Dynasty….”
That ancient Chinese term, that cage of chattering monkeys, was this why I was having trouble writing? Later that month, when I discovered Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones in the monastery library, I found out that yes, this was indeed the case.
Beginner’s Mind
As I sat in the monastery library reading Goldberg’s book for the first time, I realized that up to that point, my experience of writing was one of fear, anxiety, and doubt. Doubting my own mind and doubting any idea that emerged from my own thoughts. And a lot of my coaching clients have felt this way too.
Now here was a book giving me “…permission to write the worst junk in the world, and it would be okay.” A book telling me to buy “…a cheap spiral notebook…” that would let me feel that I could “… fill it quickly and afford another.”
In our writing notebooks, Goldberg says, “Give yourself a lot of space in which to explore writing.” She talks about the Zen concept of “beginner’s mind.” About having openness like a beginner, that each moment, each experience is fresh. She tells us, “…. beginner’s mind is what we must come back to every time we sit down and write. There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again… Each time is a new journey with no maps.”
Every time you show up for writing you begin to trust “your own mind” more and more. You then create “a confidence in your experience…{as your}… understanding continues to deepen.” Writing, like Zazen, is a practice you can do for your whole life.
“Make Writing Your Practice…”
In fact, after she had been practicing Zen for a few years and writing too, Goldberg tells us that her Zen teacher Katagiri Roshi said, “Why don’t you make writing your practice? If you go deep enough in writing, it will take you everyplace.”
In Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg lovingly shows us that using writing as a practice can be a skillful way “to help you penetrate your life and become sane.” She says writing “…can be applied to …anything you love and have chosen to work with in your life.”
Writing Down the Bones has short chapters that after a first consecutive reading can be read in any order because Goldberg means for each chapter to stand on its own. So in working with this book, you can choose any chapter and zero in on what that chapter is showing us. Each chapter offers us clear, specific ways to let writing into our lives and create a deep and sustainable practice to last for a lifetime.
Writing Practice: First Thoughts, Timed Writing, and The Rules
Goldberg creates rules for writing practice based on the idea of “first thoughts.” Those initial insights that come up before our editing mind takes over too early, possibly snuffing out our wild and fresh creativity. These rules center around trusting our beginner’s mind and cutting through the monkey mind that can derail us. Goldberg says that the “…basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise.”
You decide that for your “timed exercise” you’ll write for 10, 15, 20 minutes or so. She suggests you start with a small increment of time so that you will “…fully commit yourself to it.” In fact, you must commit to that length of time. Do not give up or get distracted.
Here are the rules Goldberg lays out for us in her chapter, “First Thoughts”:
1. Keep your hand moving. (Goldberg explains don’t “pause to reread” but keep going).
2. Don’t cross out. (She informs us that this is editing while you write. You must leave everything in, even if you didn’t mean to write it. She will show you in a later chapter that there is a time for editing but not yet).
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (She even encourages you not to worry about staying within margins or on the lines of the page).
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular. (Goldberg urges, “If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has a lot of energy”).
She goes on to explain that this process will encourage us to “…burn through to “first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor…” She urges us to trust these “first flashes,” that first thoughts “…have tremendous energy.”
Possible Antidote to Anxiety
I realized while sitting in the monastery library that a writing practice was a possible antidote to my anxiety. Such deep and sustained practice had the potential to cut through my monkey mind that had been chattering on undermining my every effort. Now, decades later, Writing Down the Bones endures as an amazing support and a trusted friendly companion, as the best books are.
I recommend Writing Down the Bones to nearly every coaching client I work with who needs help blasting through writing blocks, cutting through monkey mind, and learning to trust themselves. So many of my clients have found that Goldberg’s writing practice method has helped them break through their doubts to create meaningful writing and a practice that sustains them for life. I know this book will help you too.
Try This at Home
You need to read through all of Writing Down the Bones to get the full experience of what Goldberg is showing us about writing practice. Including how to fight “the tofu” of resistance. How to become “a tourist in your own town.” How to create “writing marathons” and “writing circles.” And how to use “loneliness” and “trust ourselves.”
But to get us started, here are a few timed writings Goldberg shares with us in her chapter “A List of Topics for Writing Practice.” Remember to use the writing practice rules we have just learned and enjoy going deeply into these timed writings that Goldberg offers us:
- “Begin with ‘I remember.’ Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going.”
- “Give me your morning. Breakfast, waking up, walking to the bus stop. Be as specific as possible. Slow down in your mind and go over the details of the morning.”
- “What is your first memory?”
Resources
For more about LAWG workshops and coaching:
For more about Natalie Goldberg:
Good reads: Natalie Goldberg (Author of Goodreads: Writing Down the Bones)
For more about Zen and Buddhism:
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