Goldberg final post

I agree with the instructor in "claim your writing", where she tells the students to recognize a good piece of their writing and claim it as their own. I often have a problem doing that, I'll write something and never be sure of how good it is. I feel like I am looking for the perfect reader, and that I won't trust anyone else until I hear from them and hear that my writing is good. It's helpful to work on something and then approach it with the mindset of "this is good. I like this piece."

In addition I also appreciated the parts in Samuri where it talks about cutting apart your writing for the pieces. This is also a helpful technique, because I'll find something I like while being unsure of the rest, and then I tend to be unsure of how to proceed. Cutting and editing even large parts of texts may be what I need.

Rereading and Rewriting is actually something I do a lot. I learned this skill with an art class, to put aside a painting or a drawing and come back to it the next day or a few days later. My hangup with this method is I often find myself proofreading, editing, and rewriting my entire story every time I sit down to look at it, so I don't get a lot of new material out of my system. Sometimes I just need to put text on a page and then forget about it, rather than mull over it for hours on end. But I like the idea behind this chapter.

And the last part was a little much zen for me- but oh well. We knew that was the philosophy behind this book from early on, I disagree with big chunks of it, but that's life...

Or death, as the case may be.