Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice

Name: Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice
SKU: 96742
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3.5 | 52 ratings

Price: 13.12

Last update: 12-22-2024

About this item

"From the first moments of Natalie Goldberg's recording of Writing Down the Bones, her classic work on writing and life, listeners know they are hearing something wonderful"—AudioFile on Writing Down the Bones

This program is read by the author.

Bestselling author and teacher Natalie Goldberg shares her inspiring personal journey out of a devastating period of writer’s block and back into a life of growth, creativity, and healing.

Natalie Goldberg has been writing for the past fifty years. But at the beginning of the pandemic, she suddenly wasn’t able to write anymore. Her imaginative wellspring had dried up, and she was forced to ask herself: what do I do when what has always worked for me doesn’t work anymore?

In this beautifully written, inspiring personal account, Natalie shares her harrowing journey out of creative paralysis and back onto the page. When all of her tried and true methods–meditation, sitting still, writing practice–stopped working, she had to take drastic action. She got into her car and left New Mexico in search of a new inventive source. In her journey through the western states, she visited famous literary sites, searching for the spark that would reignite her ability to write.

And, next to Hemingway’s grave, she found it. “Get going,” he seemed to say to her, and she did. Now, Natalie shares her story of traveling through literary and personal memory to clarify her way forward, struggling to make sense of her difficult relationships with parents and teachers, and digging into her long-held grief. Ultimately, she discovers how to write through the emptiness in order to fill up the world with compassion, healing, and renewed liveliness.

For anyone struggling to reconnect with their own creative source, Writing on Empty is a gentle and instructive guide to remembering what truly matters.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press Essentials.

shirtlessreader

Robust, raw, vulnerable, honest. It is Natalie, all right.

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2024

I have a battered 2005 paperback copy of Bones. In the preface, Natalie Goldberg said Bones was published at the right time: “great hordes of Americans had a need to express themselves.” This is my last surviving copy of Bones; several I’ve given away, one was irreparably damaged by Typhoon Ondoy. I have used writing practice to finish writing a novel. I use writing practice in acting, too. Somehow it helps me penetrate the mind of my characters, as well as understand the playwrights’.

When the lockdowns of 2020 begun everywhere, I found my writing and creativity locked down, too. I thought, what the heck. Now I have huge swathes of time to do nothing. I should be writing! This should be good.

But it wasn’t. It was crippling and dumbing and deadening. I began to suspect that maybe there is something insidious and sinister in the vaccines, like my anti-vaxxer friends warned. I had to blame something. Molecular nanobots invading my mind, killing any desire to create and be human, making me addicted to phone screens and arguing with strangers on the Internet. I tried to return to Bones and writing practice. Nothing doing. I thought, “Shoot, I’m in trouble.”

When the lockdowns were lifted and society largely moved back to the “new normal,” I went back to work and found myself often forcing myself to be creative—because it was my job. It was drudgery. I lost my old mojo. It wasn’t as before: set a timer for ten minutes, pen and paper in hand, and voila! Now go for another ten minutes.

I tried to reread Bones. I enrolled in a meditation course. I tried psilocybin. Nothing. Man, those nanobots are strong. Possibly alien technology.

In July 2024, Nat released Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice. It’s about her struggle to write during the covid pandemic. I didn’t want to read it. Strong resistance. I thought, Why would I want to read that? It’ll be nothing but complaints. Complaints that I’m already too familiar with. I lived through the same pandemic. Why would I want to revisit that? No, thank you very much. I am ready to move past it.

If Bones came at the right time when people needed to tell stories, Empty came at the right time, too. Here IS Nat. It’s her voice: raw, honest, robust, vulnerable. The same voice that spoke through the pages of Wild Mind, Thunder and Lightning, True Secret, Banana Rose, Long Quiet Highway… I’m familiar with this voice.
(I’ve yet to read Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home and The Great Failure.) In Writing On Empty, there are paragraphs where her sentences are short. Sometimes for series of sentences. There’d be long sentences chopped up by commas. I get it this cadence, the shortness of breath. Yes, I caught the covid virus, too. Twice even. I know about shortness of breath... Then wham! She’d land on sentences of such beauty and truth and humanity. I had to pause and slowly take it in. Deep, full, belly breaths, easy like a baby’s.

Natalie’s gift is to be able to teach fellow writers Writing when all she’s doing is writing. She is able to teach fellow storytellers to tell their stories simply by telling her own stories. In the short chapters of this memoir are valuable writing gems. Nat is complaining about writer’s block (she calls it “writing on empty”). She writes her way out of it. Look, here’s the book as evidence. It’s possible to write one’s self out of creative drought.

Then, as a bonus at the end of the book, she reviews each chapter with an encouragement to the reader to go and write. I’m about to go do those exercises now.

This week Tropical Storm Kristine (aka Trami) canceled all my rehearsals. I’ve succumbed to depression. Then I finished reading Empty. Tomorrow I’m going to spend a weekend at a hotel in Clark, Pampanga. I’m taking my notebook, some pens, and the Writing Down the Bones deck with me. I, too, will write my way out of this writer’s block. Nat, once again, has shown us how, with her own practice. Thanks, Nat.

John Thorndike, Author of "The World Against Her Skin"

"A writing practice that builds a writing spine"

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2024

At the end of this engaging memoir, Natalie Goldberg gives us a “Road Map” to what she has written, a key to how we might use the book. The map presents “a writing practice that builds a writing spine. Once you have that, you can direct your writing wherever you want.” Like most of Goldberg’s work, this book urges us to track the deep emotional paths of our our personal and family history. She invokes the sway of description and detail, the power of memory, the value of discovering an answer, “rather than having the answer ahead of time.”

As well, she points out the value of reading again the books we love, of paying attention to the secrets people keep, including our own. She explores the help of travel, of seeing new worlds and meeting new people—and all of this is tied to the primary narrative of the book, which is how the author coped with the grinding restrictions of the pandemic.

As Covid moved in, Goldberg found herself, for the first time, with no next book in mind. Before, one had always flowed after the next: “Book after book, nothing else. Single-minded. At the time it felt like compulsion—as I wrote one, I ached to write the next. I never thought how lucky I was.” But now she was stumped, with no idea of what could come next. What evolved is this very book, a memoir written using all the techniques of Goldberg’s own Writing Practice. All her skill, and all she knows about writing, is on display in this moving book.

Michelle Castaneda

A Writing Journey

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2024

Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice by Natalie Goldberg is the latest book by a classic author of books about writing. This book seems to be a memoir of getting through the pandemic and through several writer’s block. The author visits literary sites and gathers inspiration along the way. The vignettes in the book felt disjointed and a bit rambling. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

Debbie A. Tripp

Like hearing from an old friend

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2024

Writing Down the Bones changed my life when it first came out. I have purchased all Natalie’s books since then. This one is a lot like catching up with an old friend. There is less writing instruction. However, her writing demonstrates the use of her years of instruction. I love this book and appreciate hearing from Natalie in this book. I only wish it where longer and she had ended the chapters with “try this.”

Kim

This book is layered in the untold story we all lived.

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2024

This is an incredibly deep and personal story that touched my heart. I felt as though Natalie and I walked some of the same steps I took during the pandemic and after. This is now one of my favorite books. I read Writing Down the Bones every year before I go back to teaching in the fall. Year 41 is almost upon us. I teach elementary school. This will now be added to my yearly rereads.

Thank you, Natalie. You are a kindred spirit.

Kindle Customer

Disappointed

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2024

There is nothing wrong about the Internet. Some of us have physical issues that make writing by hand, or hiking, or climbing, difficult if not impossible. Some of us are not able to travel as extensively as the author has done. So, the implication is that if we are not exactly like the author in every way, we are wasting our lives. Gee, thanks...not!

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