Tart's Book Club: "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg

Aren’t you in for a treat? I am learning to free up my inner writer by reading a book that I have been holding back for myself all this time. I’ll explain:

There’s a chapter in a self help book that I have left, that to this day that I haven’t ready. I’m “saving” it for myself. I told a therapist about this once and she gave me ‘permission’ to read it. I still haven’t.

I guess I want to be able to fully soak in what it's telling me, have all my marbles together to understand and have it come into my life and affect it beautifully. The sad part is, it's been unintentionally shunned out of my life while waiting for the perfect time to read out. I'm still not ready for that one.

Then there’s this book on writing, that I knew had the potential to open me up to writing better that has been hiding in a certain box, I always knew where it was at, but until yesterday I hadn’t really pulled it out and read it.

And so I am reading again, which is novel since I haven’t felt like doing THAT in a loooong time. And the book, which I knew exactly the location of despite all these years, is great for me, because the chapters are literally 2-3 pages, so I can focus and get the thought.

We had T-bones for dinner and so each of our dogs got the bone from it. I put Mia in her crate (something that usually makes her fer-reak out) with her bone and I decided to hang out in my room with her so she wouldn’t start making those unhappy noises when she realized she was alone.

So, for some reason that's when I pulled out the book “Writing Down the Bones,” 'Freeing the Writer Within', by Natalie Goldberg.

I was told by my professor(s) in college that this book can make you write like a madman, just go and go. I guess I wasn’t ready for that until now.

So, there are writing exercises in it, sure, but it’s the thought process of writing not only as meditation, in other words, you could somehow write instead of meditating, though I haven’t ever Really meditated or know how this could be.

There’s so much more, it’s about letting go; letting go control of the material and letting it all come out, Girlfriend/or Boyfriend.

It helps you start and go, go, go. Trusting your first thoughts and stop censoring yourself – censoring I may do for the blog is editing, a second step from initially getting it all out, the first real step.*

What a joy for me! Writing is one of my favorite things and this is actually a helpful guide that I can finally deal with. I don’t know what this says about me, but now I will be even more capable to delve and talk about me.

After all, that’s what I know – the contents of my life and brain. And what a fascinating, sometimes maligned brain it seems to be. (If you want crocheting, knitting, x-stitch, crafts, pets, pretty pictures – check out my Good Stuff Jungletart's Good Stuff blog)

I may take on the ‘Oprah role’ of picking this as my Favorite book of the moment (besides the Bible readings I have with Mysti, which must have opened me up to reading again. How awesome, Mysti!!!:) and maybe I’ll have global classes for free on it. Just come to the blog. Your teacher Tart is here. I’ll get back to you on office hours.:)

*These are my thoughts on the book, my take on what Ms. Natalie Goldberg is saying. In college/school you learn to synopsize what you read, so that you are not plagiarizing it. I needed to explain what was so neat about this book, and this is what I wrote, with the book closed.:)