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About Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg is the author of fifteen books. Writing Down the Bones has sold over one million copies, been translated into nineteen languages, and started a revolution in the way we practice writing. Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku is her latest book. For the last forty years she has practiced Zen and taught seminars in writing as a spiritual practice. She lives in northern New Mexico. For more information and updates about her offerings, please visit her website.

Praise for Natalie Goldberg

“Natalie Goldberg is one of the world’s most beloved writing teachers, a mentor who has inspired millions to take up the pen and write.”

—Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being

“No one writes about Zen and writing and being human with more honesty, verve, and punch than Natalie Goldberg.”

—Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Zen priest, author of What Is Zen?

“Goldberg writes observantly, with a direct simplicity. She gently catches your eye while piercing the soul. To read her is to invite your own transformation.”

—Jonathan Odell, author of Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

“I’m convinced that none of the writers of my acquaintance can go another day without a copy of Natalie Goldberg’s magical manual, Writing Down the Bones.”

—Linda Weltner, The Boston Globe

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Interactive Card Deck

Card Deck

Writing Down the Bones Deck: 60 Cards to Free the Writer Within

With more than 1 million copies sold and translated into nineteen languages, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones has inspired countless writers around the world. Now, Natalie answers one of the most frequent questions from writers: how do I begin? Right here! No matter what level. Writing Down the Bones Deck offers 60 all-new topics to awaken the mind and explore writing from fresh perspectives. Many of the topics offer multiple angles, providing inspiration again and again. Working with this deck is like a personal course with beloved writing instructor Natalie Goldberg.

Each card contains a writing topic on one side and a short lesson on the reverse, delivered in Natalie's honest, heartfelt urgency. From classic prompts that Natalie Goldberg has used a thousand and ten times for her own writing, like “I'm looking at . . .” and “I'm thinking of . . .” to writing about memories of silence and things you forgot to say, the cards will spark you. Whether you are new to establishing a writing practice or you've been going strong for years, the Writing Down the Bones Deck will help you focus on the details and inspire you to develop discipline, gain confidence, and break free to tell your story.

The 60 color cards come in a magnetic enclosure box with a short introductory booklet.

How do I begin?
Right here! No matter what level.

60 new writing topics and short lessons

Magnetic enclosure box with a short introductory booklet

Books

Paperback

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

For more than thirty years Natalie Goldberg has been challenging and cheering on writers with her books and workshops. In her groundbreaking first book, she brings together Zen meditation and writing in a new way. Writing practice, as she calls it, is no different from other forms of Zen practice—“it is backed by two thousand years of studying the mind.”

This thirtieth-anniversary edition includes new forewords by Julia Cameron and Bill Addison. It also includes a new preface in which Goldberg reflects on the enduring quality of the teachings here. She writes, “What have I learned about writing over these thirty years? I’ve written fourteen books, and it’s the practice here in Bones that is the foundation, sustaining and building my writing voice, that keeps me honest, teaches me how to endure the hard times and how to drop below discursive thinking, to taste the real meat of our minds and the life around us.”

The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zigzag Life

Here, Natalie Goldberg, “a writer both energized and enlightened” (Julia Cameron), shares those vivid moments that have wakened her to new ways of being. We follow alongside her mapless meanderings in the New Mexican desert and her pilgrimages to Bob Dylan’s birthplace and to Larry McMurtry’s dusty Texas ghost town of rare books. We feel her deep hunger while she sits zazen in a monastery in Japan, and her profound loss when she hears of the passing of a dear friend while teaching in the French countryside.

Through it all, she remains grounded in a life informed by two constants: the practices of writing and of Zen. With humor and insight, Natalie encircles around the essential questions these paths compel her toward: Where does this life lead? Who are we?

This is a book to be relished one awakening at a time. Each story is a reminder that no matter how hard the situation or desolate you may feel, spring will come again, breaking through a cold winter, bringing early yellow forsythia flowers. And the Great Spring of enlightenment—that sudden rush of acceptance, pain cracking open, obstructions shattering—will also burst forth.

Paperback | Hardcover

Paperback

Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home: A Memoir

When longtime Zen practitioner and world-renowned writing teacher Natalie Goldberg learns that she has a life-threatening illness, she is plunged into the challenging realm of hospitals, physicians, unfamiliar medical treatments, and the intense reality of her own impermanence. In navigating this foreign landscape, Natalie illuminates a pathway through illness that is grounded in the fierce commitment to embrace the suffering directly. In the middle of this, her partner discovers that she too has cancer. The cancer twins, as Natalie calls them, must together and apart grapple with survival, love, and the rawness of human connection. This book is a moving meditation on living a genuine life in full bloom.

Videos

Natalie Goldberg on Living with Cancer

Natalie Goldberg explains what it was like living with cancer. Read more about Natalie's journey through cancer in her book, Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home.

Writing with Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, discusses her writing practice and offers a ten-minute writing prompt. The only rule is that you have to keep your hand moving. No matter what comes up, you put it on the paper and keep going.

Natalie Goldberg Reflections

Learn more about the person behind the groundbreaking work, Writing Down the Bones, which brings together Zen meditation and writing. Take a look into her life, and become inspired by the woman who has helped generations of writers pursue and practice their craft in a wholly unique, creative way.

Natalie Goldberg on the Book Title Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home

Learn about how the title of Natalie Goldberg's new book, Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home, was chosen.

Natalie Goldberg on Writing Down the Bones

Watch this interview with author Natalie Goldberg on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of her phenomenally successful self-help for writers book, Writing Down The Bones.

Excerpt

We Won’t Last Forever | An Excerpt from Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home

“On a Wednesday morning, sitting in my old blue Volvo in a parking lot after just getting a facial—my cheeks redolent with cream, all pores clean—I called the Cancer Center in Santa Fe, persuaded an oncologist to look up my chart. The oncologist I was assigned to was on vacation, and no one else was willing to give me the results of my blood tests. “Sure, I can do that,” he said. He came back on the line. ‘It’s positive for CLL.’” Read this excerpt from Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home.