Natalie Goldberg wrote poetry for ten years and could not get it published anywhere. She tried and tried and finally had enough. She tried something new. She didn’t give up writing, just stopped writing poetry to focus on a book called Writing Down the Bones. She had no idea as she wrote that it would capitulate her to fame. Not a clue.
She stopped poetry, tried another way to break through, because writing was her passion, her way of being in the world.
“Don’t get stuck where you have not succeeded,” Natalie advises in Old Friend From Far Away: The Pratice of Writing Memoir, which I finally finished. It took a long time because I’m writing a novel not a memoir, so it really didn’t work as a tool for me, but I love her voice and stories. Still, this advice pulled me up by the neck and made me look at my life. Where am I stuck?
Only everywhere. I have not succeeded in publishing a novel, not yet anyway, but neither have I made peace with teaching. So. What now? Quit both? Natalie continues her advice: “Stay connected to the power, the pleasure of writing.”
Excellent. I can do that. With the WIP & teaching, too.
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