
Writing on Empty
A Guide to Finding Your Voice
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Narrated by:
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Natalie Goldberg
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By:
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Natalie Goldberg
About this listen
"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.
©2024 Natalie Goldberg (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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FYI: Subset of “Be Grateful to Everyone “
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Critic reviews
“Natalie Goldberg is a sensualist. She lives life deeply; sight and sound, taste and smell. She takes the reader on a felt journey, exploring the odd corners of her mind and their own. Writing on Empty reveals a life richly led—it invites the reader within us all to explore and expand their particular human experience.”—Julia Cameron, New York Times bestselling author of The Artist's Way
"A refreshingly honest look at the struggles of the creative mind. Writers waiting for the muse to strike will find comfort and plenty of useful tips."—Publishers Weekly
"At some point or another, nearly all writers suffer a spell when the aquifer of inspiration runs dry. With Writing On Empty, Natalie Goldberg has written a sagacious and at times surprisingly funny memoir about her own dry spell—a chronicle that will also serve as an elegant instruction manual for others on how to write through the inevitable desolate patches to rekindle the banked fires of creativity."—Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder
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-
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By: Julia Cameron, and others
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Wild Mind
- Living the Writer's Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Story
Writer, poet, and teacher Natalie Goldberg shows you how to unleash your "wild mind" - the true source of your creative power. In this crisp mix of memoir, teaching guide, nonfiction and poetry, Goldberg strips creativity to the essential mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive, and hungry." Natalie is compassionate, practical, and humorous. "Even if it's just a leg hanging out the window, she says, "write it down." Highlights include: provocative "try this" exercises to compel you into action, advice on how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, how to make sentences come alive, and how to overcome procrastination and writer's block. She'll also explore the larger vision of the writer's task: knowing when to take risks as a writer and a person, learning self-acceptance in life and art.
-
-
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By: Natalie Goldberg
-
Writing the Landscape of Your Mind
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
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Story
The outrageous sage of modern American writing holds a workshop on how to connect with yourself. During this workshop to benefit the Minnesota Zen Center, Natalie Goldberg weaves writing theory and Zen theory. You'll hear what audience members achieve through her now famous Writing Practice and learn how to write your way to self-discovery. Highlights include: Natalie on tackling Structure, a brand new facet of her thinking on writing not addressed in her books Bones or Wild Mind, and Natalie reading the introduction to her book Long Quiet Highway.
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
Writing Down the Bones
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- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
-
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Here is a new collector's edition of this modern classic as you have never heard it before, read by Natalie Goldberg herself and then infused with her most personal reflections about this "magic manual" for all writers. Try these ingenious, Zen-based exercises to expand your writing skills - or just for fun.
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The Substance
- By Krissy D. on 07-09-10
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a decade ago, when Writing Down the Bones first appeared, Natalie Goldberg started a revolution in the way we practice writing. Now, for the first time, Goldberg reads her classic work, while offering new commentary about the creative, spiritual, and practical dimensions of writing. This collector's edition also includes an exclusive interview with the author.
-
-
An excellent edition to any writer's toolbox!
- By Aisha on 05-06-04
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
The Art of Writing Memoir
- Finding the Past in the Present
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This weekend workshop, recorded live, is a primer on writing the modern memoir, which, unlike your grandmother's memoir, can be written at any age. Also, a memoir can be about just part of your life. "The more you are present, the more the past will come up and be alive," says Natalie. "Only right now can give you your past."
-
-
For right brain writers, not left brain
- By Cindy on 03-01-14
By: Natalie Goldberg
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The Writing Life
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- By: Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
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Performance
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Story
Through their many best-selling books, Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron have done nothing less than deepen the way millions of us experience the art and practice of writing and creativity. Now, with The Writing Life, Cameron and Goldberg join forces for the first time in this revealing dialogue that speaks to our common search for an everyday spirituality.
-
-
Enjoyed hearing 2 perspectives from writers who have impacted me
- By Cheri Keirstead on 04-03-16
By: Julia Cameron, and others
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Wild Mind
- Living the Writer's Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Writer, poet, and teacher Natalie Goldberg shows you how to unleash your "wild mind" - the true source of your creative power. In this crisp mix of memoir, teaching guide, nonfiction and poetry, Goldberg strips creativity to the essential mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive, and hungry." Natalie is compassionate, practical, and humorous. "Even if it's just a leg hanging out the window, she says, "write it down." Highlights include: provocative "try this" exercises to compel you into action, advice on how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, how to make sentences come alive, and how to overcome procrastination and writer's block. She'll also explore the larger vision of the writer's task: knowing when to take risks as a writer and a person, learning self-acceptance in life and art.
-
-
Get to know Natalie Goldberg
- By Sven Severin on 04-21-15
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
Writing the Landscape of Your Mind
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The outrageous sage of modern American writing holds a workshop on how to connect with yourself. During this workshop to benefit the Minnesota Zen Center, Natalie Goldberg weaves writing theory and Zen theory. You'll hear what audience members achieve through her now famous Writing Practice and learn how to write your way to self-discovery. Highlights include: Natalie on tackling Structure, a brand new facet of her thinking on writing not addressed in her books Bones or Wild Mind, and Natalie reading the introduction to her book Long Quiet Highway.
By: Natalie Goldberg
-
The Great Spring
- Writing, Zen, and This ZigZag Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.
-
-
An enjoyable insight
- By Leigh A on 05-22-23
By: Natalie Goldberg
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The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Story
Your most potent writer's tool is your own mind, Natalie Goldberg says. From there springs the detail and truth that give your written words power and authenticity. Now this best-selling author introduces you to the pleasure of creating vivid memoirs of your own with Old Friend from Far Away.
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Thinking about writing a memoir?
- By Yaritza on 08-14-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Three Simple Lines
- A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the world’s foremost writing teachers invites listeners on a joyful journey into the reading and origins of haiku.
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Splendid simple story
- By barbara s redfield on 03-21-21
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Thunder and Lightning
- Cracking Open the Writer's Craft
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The challenge we face as writers, Natalie Goldberg says, begins with the process of turning inward and then trying to communicate what we find. From the secret of letting characters and stories "write themselves" to finding mentor sources and responding to criticism to writing's one essential ingredient, which is the mind - here are all-new Zen-based lessons and reflections, refined and proven at Natalie's acclaimed national writers' workshops.
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Inspiring
- By StoryDtechtive on 02-11-17
By: Natalie Goldberg
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The Book You Were Born to Write
- Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World
- By: Kelly Notaras
- Narrated by: Kelly Notaras
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A guide to writing a full-length transformational nonfiction book, from an editor with two decades' experience working with authors from all walks of life.
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Both Funny and Informative
- By Emily C. Maher on 02-15-21
By: Kelly Notaras
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On Writers and Writing
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?
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l just love Margaret Atwood.
- By Brandy Ringleb on 01-11-21
By: Margaret Atwood
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Writing Tools (10th Anniversary Edition)
- 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Neil Kaplan
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost 30 years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of 50 short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the best loved books on writing available. This new edition includes five brand-new, never-before-shared tools.
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Refreshing
- By Danielle on 06-15-21
By: Roy Peter Clark
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1000 Words
- A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All-Year Round
- By: Jami Attenberg
- Narrated by: Jami Attenberg, Kamali Minter, Joy Osmanski, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgement, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.
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Amazing book on craft!!!
- By Inna on 02-29-24
By: Jami Attenberg
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How to Write Best-Selling Fiction
- By: James Scott Bell, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: James Scott Bell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
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Most people think the way to write a best seller is to have a lot of talent and even more luck. As you will learn, there is a recipe for success, and luck may be the least important ingredient in creating a best seller. No one has cracked the code better than James Scott Bell. A best-selling author himself, and the author of the number-one best seller for writers, Plot & Structure, Mr. Bell has been teaching the principles of best-selling fiction for over 20 years, principles that apply to any genre or style.
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I'm a writer and this course is to blame.
- By accentrique on 07-22-19
By: James Scott Bell, and others
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Freeing the Writer Within
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 1 hr and 27 mins
- Original Recording
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The best-selling author of Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind offers a Zen approach to creative writing to help you find your own voice. Goldberg offers techniques for getting to the essential speech of your mind, bypassing the internal editor, and developing the confidence to trust the writer within. This workshop is about writing - it is also about helping you penetrate your life and become sane. Goldberg is a poet, fiction and nonfiction writer, and a teacher.
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I hope the book is better
- By Evelyn on 12-21-05
By: Natalie Goldberg
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A Poetry Handbook
- By: Mary Oliver
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks listeners through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind—a must-have for all poetry-lovers.
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I learned some things
- By Tim on 03-16-25
By: Mary Oliver
What listeners say about Writing on Empty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Innocent Bystander
- 07-24-24
A zen -tour de force!
Whether you met her through zen practice, her grasp of Haiku, or writing or have some personal kinship relationship with her across many years or just a moment, you will find all of that converging in Writing on Empty... and that is intentional.
Some of us, are cut flowers. Without roots, our beauty is in our appearance, our relevance - brief. Some of us are rooted plants growing in a container at risk of becoming rootbound, limited to a context and defined by the container itself. And some of us, planted in rich soil sink down deep sustaining roots that are nourished by many resources. Growing both vertically and horizontally -- blossoming -- bearing fruit -- sowing seeds in tomorrow. Katagiri Roshi -- 12 years of learning to hold her seat -- and her sanga is now and everywhere. Nothing disappoints. Truly engaged... Buddhist... practice...
Sit down
BE
at home
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