Heart to Hands, Natalie Goldberg at Bookworks in Albuquerque, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. (QuoinMonkey started the Writers’ Hands series; this photo is in that fashion yet not of the series. Deep bow to QM for the inspiration.)
It’s been almost a month since I went to Bookworks on Rio Grande Boulevard in Albuquerque’s Rio Grande valley to hear Natalie Goldberg read from her new book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.
Bookworks is a small bookstore, one of the few independents left in the city. Every nook is packed with something — books, journals, cards, stationery. It’s the kind of bookstore that makes you feel like you’ve walked into the living room of an eccentric old bibliophile.
It was amazing they fit in as many chairs as they did — four rows, about ten chairs in a row. Which means, 40 of us were sitting — the ones lucky enough or smart enough to get there early. I snagged the last chair, tucked against a bookshelf. I didn’t see it until I’d been standing for ten minutes. I was relieved to sit.
Every other open space in the bookstore was then filled with mostly women, mostly my age or older, standing. They were like water flooding the store. They lined the aisles, one person standing behind another standing behind another. It was vaguely reminiscent of the midnight sale of book seven in the Harry Potter series, except on a smaller scale.
A woman I knew, a recent transplant from Denver, sat two chairs over from me. We leaned in to chat about how excited we were to see Natalie. The woman motioned with her chin around the room. “I can’t believe we didn’t have to stand in the line to get in. If this were in Denver, they’d have to sell tickets, and there’d be a line just to buy the tickets.” She was right. Albuquerque is still a town masquerading as a city.
Natalie arrived late. She was calm; she’s always calm. She tried sitting in the wingback chair they had set up for her in the front of the store, but when she did, she could only see the people in the first row. Instead she pushed aside a display of small bunnies — Easter paraphernalia — and climbed atop a platform normally used for merchandise.
“Ah, that’s better,” she smiled as she looked around the room.
It’s hard this many weeks later to summarize what Natalie said. From my notes, I offer these few gems:
- Of the recent memoir debacle, where a young memoirist was busted for falsely portraying herself as a half Native American, half-white foster child involved with gangs in South-Central LA, Natalie said that this fabrication and others like it are an indication of how much energy there is around memoir.
- She said people who want to write memoir sometimes think they need to span their entire lives. Writing memoir isn’t about writing your life — birth to however old you are now. It can be writing about a portion of your life: My life with men. My life with chocolate.
- Old Friend from Far Away is, according to Natalie, the closest experience you’ll have to being in the classroom with her. Having read several chapters in the book and having spent many weeks in her workshops, I can vouch — it’s as if I’m there all over again.
- She said the book is structured the way it is for a reason: so readers won’t freeze on any one chapter in the book. No hanging a section like you would a poem on your refrigerator. She wants us to read the whole book; “It was made with the whole mind.”
Natalie read three or so chapters from the book. In one titled “One Thing” (p.247) I recognized immediately a fellow student of Natalie’s who participated in the same year-long intensive that QuoinMonkey and I attended. “Just Sitting — Or Doing the Neola” (p. 82) was inspired by another student. I smile now thinking how much the essence of her students is captured in this book.
Thank you
Sky and tree
Big and small
Green and red
The taste of chocolate
Bread and pinto beans
This land and other lands
Past and future
Human, dog and zebra
Everything you know–
And the things you don’t
Hunger, zest, repetition
Homesickness,
Welcome.
This is for all my students
( ~ the dedication in Old Friend from Far Away)
Of the chapters she read, my favorite was “Fulfilled” (p. 275). Many of us were in tears. The chapter is for us, every one of us who’s ever wanted to write. It’s long for an excerpt, and much as I’ve tried to shorten it, here it is almost in its entirety:
The author Willa Cather believed that if you had a wish for something from a young age–for example, being an opera singer–and you continually made effort at it, you would live a fulfilled life. It didn’t matter if you were on stage at the Metropolitan; maybe you sang in a local theater; perhaps you took lessons and belted it out in the shower and at family gatherings. That was good enough. The important thing was to stay connected with your dream and that effort would result in a basic happiness.
Cather said that those who gave up carried something painful, cut off inside, and that their lives had a sense of incompleteness.
…
…
Don’t let the light go out. Get to work, even if the going is slow and you have six mouths to feed and two jobs.
A few years ago I was invited to meet with the creative writing students in a graduate program at a big midwestern university. When I asked what their plans were, eight out of the ten, turning up their empty palms, said, well, the most we can hope for is a job at a community college. We know it’s hard out there in the book world.
I was quiet and looked down. In their heart of hearts I wanted them to be thinking: Tolstoy, Garcia Lorca, Jane Austen, Proust, Alice Walker, Naguib Mahfouz, Virginia Woolf, Chinua Achebe. They seemed beaten-down, too practical, too rational at such young ages. All of them should have been hungry to step up to the plate and smack the ball home. What happened?
Great writers do not write so that their readers will feel defeated. They wait for us to blow on the embers and keep the heat going. It is our responsibility. When we understand this, we grow up. We become a woman. We become a man.
No institution can give you this authority; though you may learn many wonderful things there. Like a little bird, you must open your small beak and feed yourself one drop of rosewater at a time, then a kernel of corn, a single sesame seed, even a tiny pebble. Keep nourishing yourself on great writers. You will grow from the inside out and stand up on the page.
No protest, no whining. Right now take a nibble of bread. Make a bit of effort. It does not have to be enormous. Just go in the right direction and the trees, insects, clouds, bricks of buildings will make a minute turning with you and salute you.
After Natalie signed my book and I snapped shots of her signing it and the person’s behind me, I said goodbye, tucked my camera into my pocket, and turned to leave. Natalie called out to me: “Send everyone my love on the blog.”
-related to posts, Natalie Goldberg — Old Friend From Far Away (Two Good Reasons to Buy Independent), Natalie Goldberg — 2000 Years Of Watching The Mind, Beginner’s Mind, More About The Monkey
I delayed buying Natalie’s new book, but I did. I am so glad that I did. The book captures the essence of a writing workshop and like ybonesy it took me back to the classroom and the people who attended the intensive. The whole experience changed my writing life and influenced every other aspect of my being.
Willa Cather was right when she said that staying with your dream can bring you happiness.
The writer’s hand pictures are the absolute best. Hands, hands, hands…the picture say so much. Thanks, QuoinMonkey for all those photos.
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I too am a follower of Natalie Goldberg’s writing practice principles. I bought this book recently and am scheduled to attend her workshop on this topic in a few weeks. I see in the Sage that you have a writing practice group. I’ve been looking for a (good) one since I moved back to NM. Are you taking newcomers?
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Welcome, first50, to red Ravine. I had at one time thought I was going to take her April workshop, and time slipped away from me. I didn’t register, else I might have seen you there. Will this be your first one? It’s a weekend workshop, isn’t it?
I do have a local writing practice group, but unfortunately, no, we’re a small group of friends who first socialize then sit then write.
I used to co-host a writing group that for five years kept an ad in the Weekly Alibi. That worked out fairly well, mainly because there was a core group of about 4 people who showed up every week.
Finding a Bones-style writing practice group is a special thing, and I would say it’s worth founding one if you can’t find one.
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Hey Bob, I agree, QM’s writers’ hand series is brilliant. Speaking of hands, did you notice that in Old Friend from Far Away, Natalie includes a topic about hands? It’s p. 130, “Hand and Wrist.”
Hands are powerful. I see my aging parents’ hands in my own.
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I had made several attempts to attend this month’s weekend class in NM, but I got so overwhelmed with making travel and hotel arrangements. I am hoping the workshop in MA later this year will be as good.
Something about NM though draws me…I would like to know more about the intensive being mentioned.
Natalie’s newest book was published at such a wonderful time for me, and it caught me back into the process of writing practice right at a point when I need it most in my life. (In my younger years, I found Bones to be THE most important spiritual practice I learned) I grew up in the south, living now in Baltimore, MD. Something QM said in one of her comments about NM being her sacred home, and yet not wanting to move there…I can identify with that. I have that type of relationship with Asheville, NC. I am now working on a memoir about my Southern grandmother; it is mostly in the journal format right now, so I am trying to figure out how to put all of this into a finished work. I also wonder does memoir ever become “finished”?
I love that I found red Ravine.
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Hands are interesting…my last trip down south to visit my grandmother, I did a whole photo-study of her hands and the everyday things she touched.
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What a poignant study that would be, Spiritdwel, and a perfect complement to your memoirs of your grandmother. (I also have a series of photos that I took and that a friend took, of my father’s hands. He has a noticeable tremor in one of his hands, now — he’s 84 — and it was hard for me to see his hands lost their strength and change in this way. Our parents’ and grandparents’ hands are powerful symbols to us.)
Does memoir ever become “finished”? I don’t think so. I mean, you can write about so many experiences and aspects of your life, and in that way memoir is, in my visual way of looking at things, like a faceted diamond. So many angles to take. But I do think you can take one of those angles and complete it. Whether it’s published only for family or for the whole world is a different matter.
In the excerpt Natalie read that I highlighted in this post, she is, of course, urging her students to aim for the stars. Those urgings inspire me. But my father wrote his memoirs for our family, and that “book” is as cherished as — and in reality, more than — my favorite memoirs by known authors.
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Thank you for highlighting this passage from the book about Willa Cather, ybonesy. I had forgotten it, which is perhaps why it struck home on this morning when I feel like my rewriting process is the equivalent of a med school anatomy lesson, taking apart bits of a corpse to understand how they work.
This is the kind of gift Natalie gives me in every book she writes — that connection to the importance of the doing, without regard for any gaining idea, as Suzuki Roshi says.
Just to do the writing work is enough.
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Thank you YB, for the picture, the excerpt, bringing me back home for a minute. Just finished spending four days in a tiny town on the Northern California coast–no telephone, no television, no cell phone service, a little cabin and a woodstove. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote (jail stories mostly that have been rattling around in my head, knocking on the inside, “hey, hey, hey,,,,let me out.”). But Natalie’s book, your comments, your quotes, bring me back to Taos. But I’m also thinking that experiences can’t be repeated (can’t step into the same river twice) so I am trying out some other writing experiences. Love to you and QM and to Bob…. Franny
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Thank you for sharing this with us!!
I especially loved this beautiful and inspiring excerpt:
“No institution can give you this authority; though you may learn many wonderful things there. Like a little bird, you must open your small beak and feed yourself one drop of rosewater at a time, then a kernel of corn, a single sesame seed, even a tiny pebble. Keep nourishing yourself on great writers. You will grow from the inside out and stand up on the page.
No protest, no whining. Right now take a nibble of bread. Make a bit of effort. It does not have to be enormous. Just go in the right direction and the trees, insects, clouds, bricks of buildings will make a minute turning with you and salute you”
I hope she doesn’t mind if I apply it to artists too? 🙂
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That passage moved me, as well, Suz. It’s a great fit for anyone who is producing work — artist or writer.
Franny, whenever you wrote and read jail stories, I was riveted. Those stories are knocking to get out — I could tell by the intensity with which they came out. The notion of spending four days hunkered down in a cabin writing sounds so perfect. And yes, you’re so right about not stepping into the river twice. (Although I wouldn’t mind floating down the Rio Grande again 8) .) I’d love to hear more about the new experiences you discover and how they work for you.
Elizabeth, this next part of your journey with your book — taking it apart and putting it back together again — is probably the least understood, the least teachable aspect of writing a book. Yet, I hope when you’re done you can somehow encapsulate it and share with us how it worked. The idea of getting up writing something totally fresh seems so much more appealing than rewriting. So I can only guess at how much resistance you face every day while you’re doing this. And I admire your persistence!!
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ybonesy, this post gave me a boost over the weekend. I was low energy and needed to stop and refill the well. I liked reading your observations and experience at Bookworks. It reminded me of the first time I saw Natalie at Orr Books.
I was drawn to what you said about structure — how she wants the book to be read as a whole, not sectioned off. It seemed like Writing Down the Bones was a book where you could go in and pull out any chapter. I wondered if you had any thoughts on the different structure of Old Friend From Far Away.
These lines spoke to me at the place I was feeling last weekend:
Don’t let the light go out. Get to work, even if the going is slow and you have six mouths to feed and two jobs.
No protest, no whining. Right now take a nibble of bread. Make a bit of effort. It does not have to be enormous. Just go in the right direction and the trees, insects, clouds, bricks of buildings will make a minute turning with you and salute you.
When I start to feel low energy, I have to remember to simply take the next right step. To make even a small effort. Eventually, the tide will turn and I’ll feel full again. This seems like a post I can come back to again. Thanks for writing it.
Franny, four days in a tiny town on the Northern California coast–no telephone, no television, no cell phone service, a little cabin and a woodstove sounds like heaven. A bit intimidating at first. It might take me a day to sink into it. But all that writing space, just for you. What a gift.
Like ybonesy, I remember your jail stories, down to the details. I was really listening. And they are so far from anything I have ever experienced. I am drawn to hear about them. I’m glad you are giving yourself the time to write.
Yes, about Taos — we can’t go back. I’m more and more inspired every day with the ways all of our projects are manifesting in the world after the Intensive. I wouldn’t want to go back and and try to recreate anything. Simply carry what I’ve learned about my practice forward the best I can.
Still, Taos will always have a place in my heart. It’s where I learned to believe I was a writer worth listening to, and that the practice was deeper than just writing. It was the place I strengthened my writing muscles and learned the value of having a writing community around me.
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BTW, it’s really great to read over all these comments. So much to think about. Thanks to everyone who left them. I’m thinking about spiritdwel’s question about whether memoir is ever finished. I resonate with what ybonesy said, it’s like a multifaceted diamond. You focus on one angle, get that written, and see what presents itself next.
When I first started the memoir I am working on now, it encompassed a huge scope of my life, the different places I had lived informing the whole. Once I started doing the research and writing, I realized that was way too big. I had to pare it down. And now I’m focused on one particular section,one place, one moment in my life, looking for the angle to reveal itself to me. Natalie was right — the most important part of writing is listening.
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ybonesy,
I notice that I have been thinking in memoir form about this process of rewriting. You are 100% right — this processhas definitely rekindled my enthusiasm for writing fresh from scratch!
But I notice too that I am learning something powerful from the process of being forced to rethink what I’ve got — and from the discipline of having a deadline.
I feel clinically nuts a lot of days in this process, shuffling around in my robe and slippers like a mental patient. But I don’t care that much. Not any more.
It’s as if the Universe keeps asking me, How much do you want this?
And I have to keep reaching deeper and deeper into my soul to find the answer. I keep discovering that I have to want to learn how to do this even more than I want the end result to succeed.
So please, if you see me shuffling by in my socks and bathrobe and crazy hair and muttering to myself, send kind thoughts and vibes in my direction.
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I almost read right by the “having a deadline” part. Yes, that would be what I’d need. Very insightful, this: I keep discovering that I have to want to learn how to do this even more than I want the end result to succeed.
You are a disciplined person, though, I can tell from writing with you. Is that a learned trait from your previous working life? QM is disciplined, too. I am, too, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. In reality, I would love to lie around all day, reading, eating vinegar and salt potato chips (or sunflower seeds), and napping. 8)
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“No protest. No whining.” I need those words tattooed onto my hand. 🙂
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ybonesy,
Some of my discipline is innate, but some of it is a learned behavior, developed when I was in college.
The innate part comes from my experience in music with the structure of practicing. I think in some ways the innate part is the question itself of, Do I want X more than I want Y? When I was very little, I wanted to learn how to play the piano. It was the one thing I wanted more than I wanted to please my parents. I kept asking and asking and asking for piano lessons until they finally relented (I was only five, so I think they saw many more years of potential nagging ahead of them).
In college, when I had to learn some new disciplines if I was going to stay afloat, I had to keep asking myself, Do I want to master this process (fill in whatever process it was — learning a language, writing a successful essay, pass a certain kind of test) more than I want to have fun tonight? Whatever I was, I noticed that the more I did it and committed to it, the better I got at it. It developed basic trust in the process.
With writing practice, what Natalie laid out just made sense to me. I am a very obedient inner child when it comes to reading and following instructions.
In Bones, when Natalie explained the rules of writing practice, I just said, Okay, and followed them.
When she said, Fill one spiral notebook a month, I just said, Okay, and tried always to do that (ask QM some time about lining up and counting the first 100 or so of my spiral notebooks at my house one Thanksgiving).
When I did the intensive, I committed to it even though I had to do some paid work every time on the side.
But my core question has to remain in front of my face all the time. Sometimes I just have to hang an index card up on my desk (or carry it around with me) that says:
This is the Universe asking, How much do you want this?
I think I learned this kind of thinking from Natalie’s books too, especially when I read about her having a cold and dragging her sorry ass down the street to the Galisteo newsstand to write anyway.
Eventually the question becomes innate but I find that I never get to stop asking it.
And now, back to figuring out what the hell needs to happen in chapter 13.
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Elizabeth, very eloquent about practice the will to keep going. I love this — “This is the Universe asking, How much do you want this?” I’ve been asking myself that the last week or so when my energy has been flagging. The answer – you’re on fire for it. Show up. Keep going!
ybonesy, yes, I was there to bear witness – 100 spiral notebooks, lined up on a bedroom bookcase shelf (do I remember a Yoda notebook?). Impressive. And a testament to her practice!
Elizabeth, where do you do your writing now? Do you still use the little nook space near the kitchen? Just curious if that has shifted for you over the years.
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And what size are those notebooks? I buy pretty thick ones 8) .
I’m kind of intrigued by this whole question of why some people persist with their creative goals (or any type of goal, for that matter), and why others struggle. What is it that differentiates us all?
I don’t feel like I’m disciplined enough — that there’s always more than I can do. BTW, I thought it was interesting to read in our latest guest post, An Evening With Elizabeth Gilbert & Anne Lamott (LINK), that neither author claims to have any discipline whatsoever. Yet, just take Lamott — she’s completed many books, and good ones.
So how much does discipline factor in to the completion of creative endeavors? Maybe not as much as this question of how much you really want it. That’s more about need, want, desire than it is about discipline, isn’t it? Lots to think about.
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QM,
Yes, I am back to using my little writing porch, as well as the couch (with my little lap desk). I get different energy writing in a reclined position versus sitting up straight in a chair at my desk. I seem to go back and forth between these two spots.
I wish I had a Yoda notebook! I have a number of Mickey and Minnie Mouse notebooks, as well as two Spiderman notebooks I just found at the 99¢ store last week!
yb,
Avoid thick notebooks at all costs! The point is to use something it’s possible to fill up. 🙂 Nowadays I mostly favor Mead single-subject 70-page WIDE ruled spiral notebooks. You can find them anywhere (OfficeMax and Office Depot always have them) and they’re fill-up-able.
Lately when I’m working on a specific chapter, I like to use Roaring Spring Blue Book Examination Books. I buy them by the large shrink-wrapped brick. They have 8 saddle-stitched leaves, yielding 16 pages total, making it possible to fill each one up in a couple of days.
Very satisfying.
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Here is the URL for buying a large brick of recycled Roaring Spring Blue Book Examination booklets:
http://search.office1000.com/77517
Be sure to buy the 8.5″ x 11″ booklets. 🙂
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Elizabeth, yes, I must have been thinking of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. I think you gave me a blank one of those that came home in my suitcase. 8) I love my Spiderman notebooks. They are bright red and blue – colorful. Thanks for the links. (I should make a note to link your Comment to Tools of the Trade)
I know what you mean about switching positions to write. I have a lap desk, too, and use it on the couch. The reclined position is definitely different energy. Otherwise, I sit up on the couch in the corner. The desktop I use only for my writing business writing. I’m looking forward to seeing where I sit in the studio when I write. Deck, art table, comfortable chair?
ybonesy, where do you like to write?
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I like to write in a comfortable lounge chair with laptop on my lap, but my body doesn’t like me to write like that. So when my neck and shoulders start to ache, I write at a table.
Elizabeth, thanks for the brick-o’-notebooks link. Awesome resource!!
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[…] To Everyone With Love […]
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[…] always been a fan of Natalie Goldberg. Her writing exercises and general attitude about writing have helped me in my process of writing. At my all-girls school, although they taught me a lot […]
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