Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I gobbled up the book. It was full of ideas and experiences that compelled me to sit down and write about something, anything, but just try writing again, and to feel less self-conscious about my work. It gave me ideas for writing and writing practice. I think the biggest takeaway for me was to get a journal and do writing practice, and to just write.
The book's zen feel is I think why it resonated so well with me, it was different from others I've read and inspired me.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who is a writer and simply needs an encouraging and inspiring read, or looking for something different from the common how-to-write books.
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I decided to pick up and read this book after hearing all the positive and negative opinions about it and decided I wanted to see for myself, hopefully learning something useful along the way.
As a reader:
I found the book to be pretty slow and uninteresting through the beginning; I wasn’t particularly interested in the main character or her day-to-day life. I became a little more interested near the later half of the book where I feel like it picked up significantly. There were strange parts where names were mentioned that weren’t mentioned before and other small things which were odd but weren’t too distracting.
As a writer:
I found unusual sentences that didn’t sound right, some issues with perspective, and typos. I noticed there were a lot of semicolons, which doesn’t really bother me but makes me wonder how many are too many for a novel.
The novel made me think about starting a story with action vs. starting slow and leading up to more, and the effects they both can have over readers. When I do more reading I plan on looking into it further.
Not a particularly comprehensive critique, but it’s a learning experience for me.
Everywhere I go I read that one of the best things you can do for your writing - other than just writing - is to read, read, read. Having lately not been able to pick up a book and take anything from it other than rereading a line over and over again yet not comprehending what I just read, I took a break from it. Now I feel like I can get back into it and - hopefully - learn something so my plan is to look for some books to read - preferably ones around my genre, read them, and try to take something from them if I can. Maybe I'll learn something useful, maybe not, either way I'll be reading again and it'll at least give me practice on critiquing, which I seriously need work on.
Okay, so maybe Twilight isn't quite what I'd normally read, I figured I'd try reading it to see what the buzz is all about, both good and bad. I think it'd be a good place to start.
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