Re: Writing Down the Bones

For a long time, I've been telling myself that I'll write a book someday... That I'll write an excellent story or an autobiography... I used to be a good writer, but then I stopped writing... The longer it's been, the harder it is to get back into the action of writing. A few weeks ago, I was browsing through books at Barnes and Noble and I saw this book by Natalie Goldberg called Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. I don't know what drew me to pick it up, but when I started reading the preface and the introduction, I felt compelled to buy it. I bought it with the goal of writing in it everyday, and of course I told myself that I'd do it tomorrow... Tomorrow came and went its came (insert ode to e.e. cummings). Nothing more transpired from the incident of my purchase of Goldberg's book, until I decided just now to at least write about getting the book. Ideally, it would be nice to write/respond to each of Goldberg's chapters at least once a week. There are approximately 64 chapters, so that would be 64 weeks. That's just shy of a year and 3 months... That's quite a long time... I'm inspired by the goal and accomplishment reached by Julia Powell, the author of Julie & Julia, who dedicated herself to making each of Julia Child's dishes in her famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking book.

I think I will adopt Powell's approach and apply this to my goal of writing, using Goldberg's book as a guide. I WILL write at least once a week, ideally on Mondays or Fridays, be it a line, paragraph, short story or the great American novel :o) Sometimes I will quickwrite and my ramblings will make no sense, other times I will ponder, write, ponder again, re-write, ponder once more, make necessary edits, then post for all the worlds' eyes to see. But first I will share a little bit about myself using the survey format that's usually prevalent on MySpace or Facebook :o) I'll post that as a separate blog.

Here goes! :o)

--Sandon
(Should I sign my blogs, or just leave them be? Oy ve... Decisions, decisions, decisions...