Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Not for Getting Laid
Posted on August 1, 2003 in Reading Writing
From Natalie Goldberg’s Thunder and Lightning, another book to put next to the bed for a long time and read a chapter or a page at a time:
WARNING
I have not seen writing lead to happiness in my friends’ lives. I’m sorry to say this, I, who just fifteen years ago published a book telling everyone to grab their notebooks and write their asses off. No high like it, I said. I meant it — and it was true. Now I’m past fifty, and I have given everything to writing, the way a Zen master watches her breath and burns through distraction….
Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you. Bareboned, you are on the path with no markers, only the skulls of those who never made it back.
And yet Goldberg still writes. “I have made it back,” she says and then offers “I will act as your guide.”
For me, it feels good just to see the characters appearing out of the cursor, evidencing that I am alive.
