Dear Living Dark reader,
I’m currently reading and greatly enjoying Natalie Goldberg’s Writing on Empty: A Guide to Finding Your Voice. One thing I especially appreciate is the way the book lets itself breathe. It opens with what might strike some contemporary readers, who have been enculturated to expect writers to “get to the point,” as a sustained digression.
It’s the word “guide” in the subtitle that leads my thoughts in this direction. Such a word gives the impression that this will be a practical book for writers, filled with direct advice and instruction. But in fact, the first fifty pages of Writing on Empty take the form of a pair of miniature memoirs, the first opening into the second, that move away from anything resembling practical writing advice—or, for stretches, from a focus on writing at all.
Goldberg begins with an account of the creative and existential funk into which she fell during the first pandemic year. It was a full-on inner paralysis, an attack of ennui. She sketches America’s tumultuous cultural conditions in early 2020 and then describes the regular meetings she had that year with a writer friend in a public park in Santa Fe, where they shared and considered their own lives and pasts while the wider world was gripped by crisis.
This, in turn, opens into a consideration of Goldberg’s difficult relationship with her late mother, followed by a sustained reflection on growing up as a third-generation American in a multigenerational household with her siblings, parents, and immigrant grandparents. She considers the ways her troubles with her mother skewed her life, with consequences that were still working themselves out right up until COVID, when the forced solitude and stasis finally cracked her heart open with compassion for the woman whose love and attention she had craved until their absence curdled her feelings into intermittent hatred, accompanied by plenty of guilt and inner conflict.
This strikes me as an unusual way to begin, at least by contemporary standards. Certainly, the book’s jacket copy previews the approach with its statement that “Natalie shares her story of traveling through literary and personal memory to clarify her way forward.” But I’m still struck by what suggests itself to me as something like bravery, or trust, in Goldberg’s willingness to take a route that doesn’t necessarily fulfill the reader’s expectations up front. And also by the confidence of her publisher, St. Martin’s Essentials, in letting the book begin this way.
Of course, Goldberg’s name is big enough in the world of books about writing and creativity that it carries its own weight. Readers know what to expect, and they come because the name “Natalie Goldberg” has been its own trusted brand since the publication of Writing Down the Bones four decades ago. That one still sits among my own half-dozen most cherished books on writing and creativity. I have also read some of Goldberg’s others, including Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, and found them delightful. By now, her publisher can reasonably trust this preexisting recognition and readership to bring the right kind of reader, the one willing to stay with her from the first page.
But I can imagine someone unfamiliar with Goldberg’s work cracking open Writing on Empty and, based on the expectation generated by its title, feeling confused, distracted, or deflated after encountering ten, twenty, thirty, and forty pages that don’t appear to be delivering the practical guidance they came for.
That’s precisely what I appreciate about the book’s approach. It seems to me to embody an ethos of trust: the publisher’s trust in Goldberg, allowing her to approach the designated subject in this way; their shared trust in the reader’s sensitivity and patience; and, above all, Goldberg’s trust in her own creative voice to take her where the book wants to go, so that it can reveal what it wants to be.
The memoiristic approach continues beyond this opening movement, gradually focusing more clearly on writing, creative origins, and influence, while still interweaving this with many additional topics and themes, forming an account of how writing left her and how she eventually rediscovered it. The apparent digression, in other words, is actually the method. Rather than simply telling us how to find a voice, Goldberg lets us accompany a voice—her own—as it finds its way back.
I’m presently about halfway through this slim book and, as expected, am completely there for all of it. Today I found myself moved to compose this brief note simply to call attention to it and to say that I’m grateful for its comparatively unhurried approach. Writing on Empty creates its own compelling force by inviting us into a specific human life and perspective, vividly and lucidly recalled, as Goldberg circles toward a revived spark of creative vitality and calling. This kind of writing, which invites us to enter and stay for a while as it unfolds its own meaning, in its own way and at its own pace, seems especially precious to me now.
Warm regards,
P.S. The book is, of course, available at both Amazon and Bookshop.org. These and the other links in this post are affiliate links, so I’ll earn a commission if you click through them and make a purchase. As I said back in January (the last time I published a short book review/reflection like this), I have an affiliate status with both stores but haven’t made much use of them. I figured I’d start doing more of that this year, but obviously, it hasn’t exactly carried through.
On the deeper forces in the creative life:
“[An] intimate journey into the mystery of creativity and spirit.” — BookLife review (Publishers Weekly)
“A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. — Joanna Penn, author of Writing the Shadow
“I can’t think of any [other books] that link the creative act so uniquely or persuasively with spirituality.” — Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer’s Block and The Secret Life of Puppets
READER REACTIONS:
“This isn’t a how-to book about writing. It’s a book about why writing matters, and what it’s actually touching when it’s real.”
“One of those magical texts that voices the Truth I secretly always knew.”
“It easily earns its place on my shelf of texts that have challenged and changed how I think about writing and the creative life.”
“If Colin Wilson and Krishnamurti and ST Joshi had written a tome on the essentials of creativity, it would be something like this.”
“There is potential here to change your life.”
I'm reading John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist, per your recommendation. Although I don't plan to be a novelist, the book has deep insights into writing and the creative process in general.