Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
by Natalie Goldberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Natalie GoldbergEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1986-10-12
ISBN: 0877733759
Number of pages: 171
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Book Reviews of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Book Review: "Don't Worry About Communicating with Others"
Summary: 2 Stars
In Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Natalie Goldberg spends as much time trying to get in touch with her real self that she loses touch with her readers. She so over-emphasizes spontaneity and originality, that she ends up abusing the English language without mercy.
She is perfectly content with prepositions which pop up anywhere in her sentences. She seems to take a positive delight in split infinitives and sentence fragments. Occasionally, they are fresh, but mostly they just come off as amateurish and sloppy. Her writing does not carry her thought.
Writing requires deep sincere thought and an honest encounter with feelings, sometimes very well hidden within, but writing is primarily communication and there is a craft involved here. You can't communicate raw feelings, or raw thought for that matter. They are too subjective. These raw impulses have to be filtered through language and channeled into established patterns so they can help others see and feel what you have experienced.
It does our guide very little credit when she insists on putting her message before our receiving her message. Sloppy style, awkward constructions, queer phrases and spontaneous but idiosyncratic thoughts don't communicate well.
If Natalie Goldberg's book does succeed in freeing the writer within, the whole job of finding ways of expressing that writer to others in effective words (what most of us call writing) has yet to be done. If writing were just a form of personal therapy, then her book would have merit. God knows we need avenues to self-awareness, and I am not against these. What I am objecting to in Writing Down the Bones is the unwarranted assumption that writing for one's self is the same as writing for others.
Good writing is more than just personal therapy. Good writing spends at least half of its energy reaching out to the reader. Good writing extends beyond the selfish invitation, "come into my world," by providing accessible pathways into that world. These do not appear without effort.
If Writing Down the Bones is to approach the worthy goal of conveying how to communicate, it needs much more emphasis on finding and touching the readers' soul and perhaps a little less on overcoming writers' block and achieving a state of blessed oneness. Writing Down the Bones makes the unwarranted assumption that illuminating the self and illuminating others are the same thing.
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