Natalie Goldberg has a way of talking about writing that I have never really considered before. In readings in previous weeks, the ways she said to draft or free write was so simple and made so much sense that I had never really considered it before. Of course, writing without taking any grammar into consideration is difficult for me to even consider. My grammar is far from perfect, but completely neglecting it is difficult. The reasons behind doing it, however, makes logical. In this week's readings, Goldberg talks about how we cannot worry about our words becoming us or us becoming our words permanently and how writing about our obsessions creates some of the best work.
In the chapter "We are not the Poem," Goldberg shares about how people who attend her readings think the poems are about her. She goes on to say that this is not the case, even when she uses "I," because they are really her thoughts and feelings at that moment, and those are a completely different being. While reading this, I first thought, "Oh, yes. I definitely understand that." Part of the reason I understood this so well was because I have a friend who writes (and performs) music for a living. His followers are constantly asking him what his songs are about and when that particular thing happened in his life. His response is always that his songs are not really about him, but about inspiration around him or a story that popped into his head at that moment. Everyone is just a character, even if they are based on him a little. Although this is not exactly what Goldberg was getting at, they are similar in their thought that the people in their writings are now characters and separate from the author. I have also seen this in my own writing. Although I do not write anything formal, I often jot down things to get them out of my mind so I can sleep or concentrate on actual work. When I go back to read what I wrote later on in life, I realize how different I am from that person. In fact, it is rather embarrassing, until I remind myself that that person is like a character of mine, not really a person any longer. Keeping this in mind for actual pieces helps me be less afraid to just write.
In the second chapter for this week, called "Obsessions," Goldberg talked about how we need to embrace things that are running through our minds obsessively and write about them, because that will create the best work. An example she gave was writing about her family. She said that she tries to stop writing about them for a while at times, but she always returns, because she is unable to write about anything else well if she doesn't. Once again, I had a moment of "I definitely understand this!" In fact, while writing the poems for class assignments, I ran across this very issue. I was constantly trying to avoid writing about a certain topic, because, although I understood that the piece would just be like a character and not Chelsea, the character was still too close for me to share it. After I finally gave in and tried to work out a way that was still the topic but not too close for comfort, I was able to get the poem out easily. Not only did it clear my mind, but it ended up being one of the pieces of mine that I liked the most.
Reading Natalie Goldberg's book has been a lot of help when it came to pushing me to write a certain way. Poetry has always been the writing style I have feared, as I have said in my previous entries, but her book has helped with overcoming the fear a little bit each time. She makes it seem so simple and natural to just write that it makes it almost fun.
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