Writing Down the Bones: Slow and Dumb

I remember reading this breakthrough book soon after it was published in the late 1980′s.  I don’t remember how I bought the book, and I don’t have the old copy on my shelf, so I may have loaned or given it away, Mostly, I remember how I felt after reading it. High!  I had never read a writing book like this one.  It contains nothing about publishing.  Nothing about judging (in fact, discouragement about judging). I was a young mother teaching fulltime and choosing family and my students over writing.  This book made me feel that I could be a writer–I felt a deep yearning.  I knew that Natalie Goldberg would not allow me to say I would write later in life, but fortunately, she was not there to scold me when I chose not to begin a life of writing in her daily, disciplined way.

Now it is later–more than 20 years later.  I am writing, albeit very slowly.  This week I submitted two short memoirs and a poem to a local literary contest.  And I am writing to you, here, right now, in this moment.

A fitting way to honor Natalie Goldberg’s classic text, having just read the new and expanded version, will be to do a timed writing to illustrate one of her most important ideas.  First, however, I want to note a few other items of interest from the book.  The interview at the back sheds much light on the journey Goldberg has been on and contains a lot of her philosophy in nugget form.  For example, she explains why she loves memoir:  “Memoir is the study of how memory works.  It’s analogous to writing practice, to working with the mind.”  Goldberg loves that memory works in flashes and slices, not in linear chronology. By extension, one could add, the structure of a memoir should help us see the writer’s mind.  Memoir.  Memory. Mind.  We can call them the 3-M Company–the magic behind writing down the bones.

Now, to illustrate a timed writing.  Here’s how it works.  First, you pick a subject.  If you are in a workshop, Natalie picks the subject.  But I am going to pick this one myself, something Natalie recommends when you are ready.  She prefers that students write by hand, just as fast as they can keep a pen moving over the paper, but that won’t work with a blog.  So I will give myself ten minutes to write on one of the ideas I enjoy after reading this book and attending the workshop:  what does it mean to go slow and be dumb?

I have rushed at life.  Born first of five children, I exploded out of the womb and then tried my hardest to grow up before anyone could slow me down. I liked friends who were older because I thought they would induct me in the mysteries.  I remember convincing Mother to buy me high-heeled shoes at the age of 12 so that I could know what it was to be an adult.  I am amazed now that she did that.  I can only assume that Mother was reliving her own childhood and adolescence and enjoyed pushing forward to new adventures also.  I liked to finish as many books as possible and only read a few favorites slowly.  So when Natalie says a writer must learn to be slow and dumb, I feel a little chastened by all that pellmell speed in my life. I think I am only slow when it really matters.  I hope it will really matter more to me to be slow.  They say it is amazing to watch Thich Nhat Hanh move in the world.  I got a glimpse of that by walking behind Natalie in the workshop for ten minutes.  I tried to think of each foot as an anchor and to think of all the bones that ground me in each step.  I don’t know what it means to be dumb because I have spent my life aching to be smart.  But even that is not true altogether, because I have not had the luxury of others plowing the field of higher education before me.  I discovered on my own that people will tell you much more if you ask them how to do something (treat them like they are smart) rather than try to show them how smart you are.  I have called this being a “babe in the woods” and noticed how helpful people are if you humble yourself.  Buddhists call this beginner’s mind.  I think I have changed jobs every 4-8 years all my life because that way I got to have beginner’s mind again.

I stopped because the time was up.  If I were handwriting, I think I would have written a little more than that.  I will refrain from judging–and invite you to do the same! If we were in class, and I read this piece aloud, Natalie would ask what you recall.  If you said something like, “I was the first person in my family to go to college, too,”  Natalie would wave dismissively.  “Just the words.  What were the words?”  People might say things like high-heels.  And I could only assume my mother was living her own life over again, etc.  The writer learns quickly that the specific image is the one that lingers.  I did not have too many sensory-rich images in this piece, so it will not likely stick in your memory or mine.  However, I hope the illustration helped you see what happens in the workshop and imagine how valuable it can be to learn from direct experiences like these.  What it cannot do is replicate what happens to your mind when you practice writing every day.  Ironically, writing as fast as possible, trying to capture all the random thoughts as they come, is the key to becoming slow and dumb. Sounds like a koan?! 

What kind of writer are you?  Fast? Smart? Slow? Dumb?

Natalie Goldberg: Memoir Workshop at the Sophia Institute

Last weekend I enjoyed sunshine, warm air, a beautiful room in the carriage house of the Phoebe Pember House affiliated with the Sophia Institute, a long walk in historic Charleston, a wonderful memoir workshop, and delightful conversation with Natalie Goldberg, the workshop leader, at the Slightly North of Broad Restaurant. Here she is, on the left. I learned a lot more than I can share in a short post.  But I’ll do my best to help you share the experience.

A Natalie Goldberg workshop envelops you, takes you on a ride, and challenges you.  Goldberg doesn’t mess around.  Minutes after she begins, she is doing one of the four or five activities that make up the core of her curriculum:  leading meditation practice (including walking meditation), assigning timed writings and then asking students to read, guiding other students to recall the exact words or images they heard in the reading, playing music (Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi” and Greg Brown’s “64 Dodge”), or reading passages from Hemingway and Patricia Hampl.

Goldberg is the author of many books about writing, most famously, Writing Down the Bones, a book I read in the late 1980′s soon after it was published.  The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies.

Goldberg stresses listening, paying aural attention, as the key to writing.  I found this an interesting twist on the more usual focus on seeing, noticing, paying visual attention.  She wants students to become very familiar with how their minds work and to recognize the connection between their own mind and a larger mind.  Meditation does this.  So does timed writing that starts with one subject and then moves to another.  Eventually, if one writes enough, the work deepens, descends to the level that anchors both writer and reader to the ground of all being.

Practice, practice, practice, is Goldberg’s mantra.  She believes that all children need to know how to do this kind of practice, not the boring, linear, writing exercises they learn in school.  Go deeper, lose control, find the wild mind, break the rules–these are the ways to discover your own self as a writer.  You find it by losing it.

I have not yet read Goldberg’s latest book, which was the title of the workshop.  Have you read it?  I promise to buy a copy and review it here at a later time.  Please comment below if you are a Natalie Goldberg fan.  I’d love to hear what others remember from her books or workshops.

Until then, thank you, Natalie, and thank you, Carolyn Rivers, co-founder of the Sophia Institute, for making me feel like I was an “old friend from far away” this past weekend.

Fetzer Workshop on Reflective Writing: The Conclusion

Today I finished leading the last 1.5-hour workshop in a series of four which took place at the Fetzer Institute. I think the title of this workshop–Timed Writing–may have scared away potential participants.   Sounds as jolly as retaking the SAT.  Despite the title, and despite the fact that four people on the list could not make it, we gathered around the candle in The Commons area and delved into the topic of writing and love–with one 15-minute timed writing assignment.  I offered the choice of two topics:  (1) walk through the house you grew up in until you uncover a story (2) think about who taught you about love in childhood and describe what you learned using all five senses.

I learned to appreciate timed writing when I took a workshop with Barbara Samuel, who is also Barbara O’Neale and has just published a new book:  The Lost Recipe for Happiness, a novel, which is off to a great start. Here’s how Barbara herself describes her recent life:  “It’s been a thrilling few months, with auctions in the US, between the UK and Australia, and in Germany. The book has also sold to Denmark, Holland; to Recorded Books (read by the wonderful Bernadette Dunn, who has read all of my books). It’s also available in electronic form. My new website should be up and running by the end of this week: www.barbaraoneal.com and you can always still find me at my regular blog, A Writer Afoot.”

Barbara used a lot of five-ten-minute writing assignments last summer at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.  I was amazed to see how much good work and insight can come from asking interesting questions in a safe and stimulating environment.

I can’t tell you what the students learned from me, but I can describe a few things I learned from my students today:

• each of them wrote a gem of a story within 15-20 minutes
• each of them has nourished a hidden desire to write, perhaps even a repressed calling to write
• each of them experienced love in childhood that still exists as sensory-rich memory
• workshops give people a structure and an audience, two things aspiring writers cannot take for granted
• loving and truthful criticism helps writers gain courage
• writing helps people sort their thoughts
• writing helps us deal with fear and anger without taking out these feelings on others and may help the writer transform fear and anger into love and forgiveness
• learning more about each other in a setting like this workshop brought us closer together even though we work in three different units of our organization. Writing increases love!
• love naturally leads us to gratitude. We were grateful that on a very wintry day in Michigan we could experience together our organization’s mission through the powerful combination of writing and memory.