Go and write for 10 minutes.
This is the advice writer Natalie Goldberg said to her audience April 3 in Bakersfield College’s Fine Arts 30. Goldberg is another guest speaker in BC’s “Eminent Speakers” program series sponsored by the BC Foundation.
Goldberg, who wrote “Writing Down to the Bones” and “Old Friend from Far Away” as well as the novel “Banana Rose,” was a friend and teaching colleague of the late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and was praised by popular novelist Erica Jong.
The Jewish-Polish author from Long Island and current New Mexico resident focused her lecture on memoir writing and the discipline of writing in general.
“Remember a time when you knew glory – go – write for ten minutes,” Goldberg said. “Remember what ghosts haunt you-go-write for ten minutes.”
Writing is a fluid and continuous activity that should never stop, Goldberg said.
Writing is virtually an athletic feat, said Goldberg, who has been developing her craft for thirty-five years.
Writing engages every part of the body, she said. It involves the spine, muscles, teeth, etc. Writing is a lot like going to the gym 3-4 times a week.
Always “work out” every day. Write out ideas on paper and then use a computer, she said.
Cover both sides of the paper, she also recommended. Keep your hand moving continuously with pen to paper, and trust what you write. Don’t initially worry about punctuation, and don’t stay within the margins of the paper. Shake out your hand cramps. Keep your mind and hand moving; a writer must not think of reasons to not “exercise.”
“Kick ass. Slice open your mind,” Goldberg said bluntly. “Yeah, I guess I’m bossy as a writing teacher. I’m always telling my students this: ‘Let’s get moving.'”
One method that Goldberg uses to keep self-motivated and inspired to “exercise” is to sing her poems and old American songs like “Darling Clementine” to herself.
This is a practice she picked up from Ginsberg when they were studying and teaching together in the 1970s in Boulder, Colorado and at Pacifica College in Los Angeles.
Goldberg said that Ginsberg had a terrible singing voice, and she conceded that she has what she called a “crooked voice.”
In elementary school, Goldberg’s teachers often asked her to lipsynch songs while the rest of the class sang. Nevertheless, the method of singing to inspire herself works.
“I call upon the beast of loneliness from the sky with old American songs,” Goldberg said.
Sadly, Goldberg quit trying to write poetry because she said that she was not particularly successful at it. She thereupon plunged into prose. Don’t remain in an area where you have not gained success, she recommended. Move on.
“I wanted to be a part of the human race again, so I quit poetry and galloped into prose,” Goldberg said.
It seemed to work, she said.
Goldberg cautioned the audience to become astute observers of life and to notice the smallest details. Surprisingly, she even suggested that biological age wasn’t connected with good writing ability.
“If you’ve lived ten years, then you’ve lived long enough to write,” Goldberg said. “But you have to slow down, notice things about life, and feed yourself one drop of rose water at a time.”
Furthermore, one does not necessarily have to be living an exciting life to write about life, Goldberg said.
It matters more how you write about life and not what you write. As an example, she cited Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Old Man and the Sea.”
“It’s just about an old man sitting on a boat,” Goldberg said. “But it’s the way that it was written that is important.”
Goldberg conceded that writing her first book was technically not the hardest to write, but it was the scariest.
She admitted to being afraid of both success and failure, and, as a result of her confused feelings, she stopped writing for 6 months to work in a restaurant.
She told the audience not to be afraid of failure by citing the experience of the author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” This book had been rejected by forty publishers.
Be persistent, Goldberg said. She also told them that writers need to get agents. She told the audience to attend writing conferences, and that that is where they can find agents.
Lecture attendee Marcella Joon, retired Bakersfield resident, said Goldberg covered a lot of what she needed to know about the writing craft. Jo Miller, retired KCCD employee said that she appreciated the range of the lecture.
“It was inspiring,” said Caroline West, retired State Fund workers’ compensation employee.