[Ep 192] “I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory1 First Drafts Reveal What You Want to Say We’ve already covered the power of writing to discover what we want to say. We can do that with freewriting to discover our initial ideas, writing in our journals or as a … [Read more...]
Ep 180: Write to Discover – Start with Yourself
A few weeks ago I shared with you how freewriting freed me. The book Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, played a big part in that during my college years, introducing me to the idea of timed writing as a means to write and discover. Even though I wasn't all that interested in Goldberg’s frequent references to Zen Buddhism, I liked her basic approach: "When I … [Read more...]
Ep 178: The Writer at Work – Use Freewriting to Give It Some Thought
My first university-level creative writing course used as the main text a book that, at that time, was a brand-new release: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. After moving through the exercises in that book, I felt transformed. Goldberg introduced a simple concept that I’d never heard of. It’s commonplace today, a part of the lexicon of most creative … [Read more...]
