Writing as a Practice

I’m re-reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.

Like her Wild Mind, it’s less on tactics and more on the mindset of a writer and the writer life.

The books make you feel okay with the disgust you have for your own writing and self-loathing you feel almost continuously. Or maybe that’s just me.

I have internalized an early chapter in the book: “Writing as a Practice”.

You write every day. It’s what you do. And the more you do it, the more it be comes a habit and hopefully the better you get.

“THIS IS THE PRACTICE school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run. It’ll never happen, especially if you are out of shape and have been avoiding it. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop. And you stop, hungry for the next time.”

Exactly.

She uses a journal. I use a blog/blogs and have blogged on and off for 20+ years. Longer even.

She recommend siting down with no expectation.

“When you write, don’t say, “I’m going to write a poem.” That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, “I am free to write the worst junk in the world.”

Write about whatever you are currently thinking about. It doesn’t matter.

“Don’t try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.”

It’s a warm up before you do your work. Daily. EVERY DAY!

“It is what keeps you in tune, like a dancer who does warm-ups before dancing or a runner who does stretches before running. Runners don’t say, “Oh, I ran yesterday. I’m limber.” Each day they warm up and stretch.”

The goal is volume.

“My rule is to finish a notebook a month. (I’m always making up writing guidelines for myself.) Simply to fill it. That is the practice. My ideal is to write every day.”

I need it.

I cannot move on without doing some kind of warm-up writing.

Often it’s a blog post, like this one, but other times it is a whole lot of talking to myself in a dev journal on whatever project I’m currently working on. To figure out where it’s going to next.

“It’s our wild forest where we gather energy before going to prune our garden, write our fine books and novels. It’s a continual practice.”