It used to be with chocolate. I would put chocolate in my studio and say, "You know, Nat, there's this chocolate you can have if you get over there." And usually if I got over there, I would start writing. Sometimes I need get out of the house and go to a café and write. Sometimes I'll write with other friends to get myself going. And sometimes I just say "Ok, Nat, enough. Go one hour. Keep your hand going." I'll do whatever it takes.

I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

It’s much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.

It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

My goal is to write every day. I say it is my ideal. I am careful not to pass judgment or create anxiety if I do not do it. No one lives up to his ideal.

We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.

It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected. Finally, you just do it because you happen to like it.

When I wrote and got out of the way, writing did writing.” (p.90)

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.

So even though I couldn't bear writing about cancer, I faced it every day.

Writing is the act of discovery.

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.

Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind...The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mann ered, congenial.

I have students that I tell, "If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around." The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.

Friends open the door for me to write. Then I get paid attention to and it allows me to write other books. The Great Spring and the thirtieth anniversary of Bones just came out and while I'm happy and excited about that, I've already finished a new book. That's what practice does. You don't get caught.

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.

Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them.Writing is still the wildest thing I know.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.

I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am; the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.

You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

There's an old adage in writing: 'Don't tell, but show.' Writing is not psychology. We do not talk 'about' feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. The writer takes the reader's hand and guides him through the valley of sorrow and joy without ever having to mention those words.

Let's say I've directed that [writing] energy into writing my latest book but suddenly, I really want to write about an onion. I don't say to myself, "No, you have stay on the subject," because I know that the longer I stay on the subject the more boring I get. So, if my mind wants to write about an onion, it might be a deeper way to go into what I'm working on, even though it might seem irrelevant. This is how I've learned to follow my mind.

Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

Women are wonderful, but they get so caught up about their body. We need to unhook from worrying so much. When I don't feel good, I look in the mirror and think I look fat and miserable. But when I feel good and whole, I'm not worried about my body because I'm living in it. It doesn't become an object.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.

The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.

We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don't have our own style. Don't worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing.

Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond.

It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected. Finally, you just do it because you happen to like it.

If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind...The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mann ered, congenial.

I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.

Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.

I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.