Welcome to Book Talk, where we help you find new fuel for your bookish obsession. While you might not find these authors while scrolling short-form content online, you will find their work to be significant, impactful, and, hopefully, something you reach for time and again. Happy reading!
It’s fitting that we close out our last ever Book Talk with an author who writes about writing. Natalie Goldberg has written 16 books — mainly memoir, but some poetry and fiction as well. She’s also a painter, a devoted practitioner of zen meditation, and, of course, a teacher of creative writing — for over 30 years. At present, she teaches writing workshops in Santa Fe.
Writing Down the Bones (1986) is, entirely unsurprisingly, one of those books I picked up at a thrift store without thinking much of it. I am a writer (that is, I am wholly obsessed with the act of spending any spare moment writing anything, from poems, to novels, to lists, to words, simply for the pattern my pen makes on the page) and so I bring home books on writing like other people bring home stray cats. That is, I collect them, treasure them — I sift through them for little gems that may change or improve my writing in some way.
And while you may be thinking, ‘Oh no, Catherine, not a book about writing! How dull — how uncool!’ I’m going to stop you right there. Because Writing Down the Bones isn’t just a book about writing — it’s more a book about being human, about cracking open the parts of ourselves we’re too afraid to get to in order to become better writers. And not that numbers really matter in the grand scheme of things, but Writing Down the Bones has sold over one million copies — a testament to just how impactful Goldberg’s insight is.
It isn’t an understatement to say that Writing Down the Bones has changed my life. After devouring it in two sittings, I started pulling parts of it to use in my own practice. Since then, I’ve been writing every day in some way, and have developed a better (read: healthier) understanding of what it means to be a writer.
Because this is our last Book Talk — and because Goldberg is a brilliant woman full of wise words — I’m going to leave you with not one, but two quotes. The first is to shake you up, to hopefully propel you toward the writing that you’ve always wanted to do.
“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”
And finally, something to hold onto the next time you’re questioning whether how you’re spending your time right now is the direction you want to keep walking.
“This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don’t wait.”
Forever and always — happy reading!
