Move Your Hand Across Paper - Notes From an Apprentice Poet

I've been walking about for a week,wondering how to get started on my next piece for writing.ie. I can’t get started. Then I remember Natalie Goldberg’s  The Rules of Writing Practice. Rule 1: Move your hand across paper. That’s how I recall it. The actual first rule is ‘Keep your hand moving’. In a gleeful first chapter to Wild Mind  (Rider imprint from Random House), and a follow on to Writing Down the Bones, she discovers her rules apply to sex too!

I set the oven timer to 10 minutes, sit down at the computer and type without ceasing – anything that comes to mind. After ten minutes I am surprised to find I have a draft for a third of the column. I am always surprised when things I should know work actually produce the goods! With a mental ‘thank-you’ to Natalie Goldberg, I set the timer again and return to the key board. A few hours later – allow extra for the breaks I took to gain perspective - of writing, but mostly editing I an able to submit Having a Laugh with Poetry to Vanessa O’Loughlin. Maybe it will suit, or maybe I’ll have to go again. But now I’m walking around having regained confidence in being able to find a way in.

I suspect I’ll be bringing you more about Goldberg’s Rules in future.

See http://nataliegoldberg.com/  She has a new edition of her book about art and colour coming

 http://nataliegoldberg.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_184/custom-8/images/natalie-goldberg-2013.jpg

More at:

http://whisperdownthewritealley.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/natalie-goldbergs-rules-for-writing-practice/ 

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Down-Bones-Freeing-Edition/dp/1590302613

1.   Writing Down the Bones - Shambhala Publications

www.shambhala.com/writing-down-the-bones-1.html‎

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For more than twenty years Natalie Goldberg has been challenging and cheering onwriters with her books and workshops. In her groundbreaking first book, she ...