I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, ‘What I Did Last Summer.’ When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: ‘It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.’ I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: ‘My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand.

I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, ‘What I Did Last Summer.’ When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: ‘It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.’ I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: ‘My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand.

– Natalie Goldberg –

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

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