Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones

As both a longtime writing instructor and Zen practitioner, Natalie Goldberg's book provides insights into both craft and life, or more accurately, blurs the distinction between the two.

Natalie Goldberg's classic book on writing, "Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within," has inspired writers for two decades. Writing from both the perspective of a seasoned writing instructor and a longtime Zen practitioner, Goldberg encourages writers to trust themselves and preaches a gentle and forgiving attitude toward craft, while giving discipline its due.

The title comes from advice she commonly used with writing students, which was to "'write down the bones' -- the essential, awake speech of their minds." Though some may find Goldberg's take New-Agey, and it definitely helps to come to the book open to Eastern philosophy, her advice is very much geared toward the Western mind, with its highly critical bent and its tendency to be too hard on itself. If writer's block is said to be a distinctly American invention, "Writing Down the Bones" is a healthy antidote.

Since publishing this first book on writing, Goldberg has written several other books on the topic, including "Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life" and "Thunder and Lightening: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft." All work from a Zen perspective, but none are as well-known or as inspired as this seminal work.