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Natalie Goldberg Offers Organic Approach to Writing

© Roxianne Moore

Review of WRITING THE LANDSCAPE OF YOUR MIND
audiobook by Natalie Goldberg
Writer's Audio Shop
1-880717-32-8
and Thunder and Lightning
by Natalie Goldberg
Bantam, 2000
0-553-09528-5

You've read Writing Down the Bones and done a thousand timed writing sessions. You've been inspired by Wild Mind, and learned to tame your own "monkey mind." Natalie Goldberg's classic books on writing and the writing life have provided us with a goldmine of information on getting started, keeping ourselves going even when we don't want to write, and how to find ideas when the well goes dry. You may have even read The Long Quiet Highway and Banana Rose to see if Goldberg practiced what she preached.

But Goldberg left out one important element in those early books on writing: Structure. In Writing the Landscape of Your Mind and Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft, she takes you one step further on your writing journey.

Writing the Landscape of Your Mind is an audio recording of a workshop she did at The Marsh in Minnetonka, Minnesota. The workshop features a number of timed writings, with signals that allow listeners to write on the suggested topic before continuing to listen. At several points in this two-day workshop, participants read their work aloud, giving the full flavor of a workshop environment.

What sets this apart is her discussion of structure. She talks about how she struggled with her ideas for Bones for years before she suddenly hit upon the appropriate structure. This book, as well as Wild Mind, uses a number of short chapters and exercises. Goldberg based this structure on Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. Before this, she had tried to impose an artificial structure rather than an organic one. She also talks about exploring new structures, but doesn't go into a lot of depth on how to find the right structure, and doesn't discuss the concept of plot much at all.

For that, you need to read Thunder and Lightning. The first part of this book is devoted to several aspects of structure, including plotting and writing for the right audience.

Goldberg first looks at why we don't truly learn how to write in school: we don't learn to examine what she calls "the mechanism of thought." Her background with Zen and sitting meditation gave Goldberg the tools she needed for examining and exploring the mind. She applies this to her initial writing practice as well as to the concept of organic structure.

In "Shall We Plot Along," Goldberg discusses the true meaning of plot. She says that we don't instinctively know what plot is, and teachers don't always define it in terms a writer can use. In