writing down the bones: freeing the writer within

New pace these days and it goes like this: ignore my old list, buy a new book, read it and blog about it.  I love it.  This is a book that offers some reality about being a writer. Reading about experiences from Natalie Goldberg's own journey, provides some good insight on how one would take the leap of faith and just start writing.  It is also very practical - talks about the good, the bad and the ugly.  

This book took me on an interesting journey - when I started it, I felt discouraged.  The idea of just writing notebooks and notebooks of junk, seemed so useless.  But "writing practice" is about training the mind to write, to record those "first thoughts" that are so raw and true and honest.

It is one of those books (like all books I guess) that you use your critical mind to extract what you will from it.  By the end of it, I had a number of blue dots (this is what I do when there is an interesting passage that I want to return to at a later date) beside various paragraphs towards the end of the book.

Here is one 'blue dot":

'If you begin too exactly, you will stay precise but never hit the exact mark that makes the words vibrate with the truth that goes through the present, past, and future." p. 165

In other words, let go, be free to write as you want to write, with no constraints. Wander, test and try. You can always return to accuracy.