tag archive: natalie goldberg

I love that Anne was inspired by Brenda. Their styles are quite different. Brenda is unreservedly exuberant. Anne holds back, offering despair and wicked humor along with hope. Brenda will tell you of her troubles and the quagmires of writing, but then she believes in you so fervently that you feel enveloped by unconditional love and acceptance. Anne is more grim and disturbed, but is so hilariously funny about it that you laugh and feel better.

I see now this is becoming a post about these women, the teachers that I love so much.

I’ll share this quote I randomly came across this morning:

[...] But I’m not trying to sell blog terminology this time. We’ll have to let it all float around out there fluid-like, as words do in English — or any language — and check back in fifty to one hundred years and see what we have. By then, I suspect the word “BLOG” will refer to any long form writing that’s more than fifty words. Nobody will have the patience to read something that long, though, so it will have fallen out of general usage, except in the sense of criticizing someone when they text something with actual punctuation, going on for two, three, or even four (!) sentences. That would derisively be referred to as a blog. Maybe with a wrinkle of the nose to suggest an unpleasant fart hanging in the air.

“Regular” words are those that I write myself — or are handed down to me by God, or whispered into my ear by Calliope, or whatever — and excerpt words are things I copy and paste from other sources. [...] The numbers tell me something I want to believe. Maybe I do want to write. Maybe I even like it.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. More or less. Sometimes I pursue other ambitions, but I keep coming back to the desire to write. Or at least, the desire to have written something. It would be great to have already written something brilliant and enjoy the attendant love and praise, but the writing itself is so hard. The work at hand is so imperfect and wanting. I continually resist and avoid practicing the craft. It’s much easier to idly read blogs for an hour or two.

Is This My Dream?

It makes me question my desire. Is this really my dream? Or do I just like to fantasize about being that successful author? I believe in the idea that you should do what you love. You’re …