Goldberg response

      Goldberg's Claim your Writing was a really interesting and pointed writing that has to do with not only tips for writing but tips for how to think about your writing. I like how each chapter has a specific title and idea and sticks to that. Such as in the "claim your writing" chapter it goes into much detail about how people need to realize the quality of their work. The author talks about teaching their class and says "Each student broke through resistance to a deeply felt piece of writing... I realized none of them had any awareness of what they had written." I found this to hit close to home for me because in my music writing I find that I often compare myself to one of the other undergrad students who is much farther along than I and knows much more of the musical traditions than I, but I remind myself that when I feel the emotion I put in one of the pieces I wrote then that is how I know it was successful. I feel the exact same way with my writing whether it be poetry, fiction, or even a research paper I know that if I injected some of my own emotions into the work then I succeeded.
      The concept of the chapter "the samurai" was interesting as well because this whole chapter was about thinking of what in your work is important and what doesn't need to be there. This chapter is really col in that it gets you across feeling uncomfortable with taking out large amounts of your work and saying that it is necessary. However, I agree with the "reading/rewriting" chapter when the author explains how when doing a writing you could redo it over and over days in a row and "reread them all and take the good parts and combine them." I feel like this goes strongly with the samurai idea of cutting but instead of just getting rid of the bad parts you are replacing the bad parts with more good parts that you have been writing on various days. I think it might be helpful to start from scratch when rewriting such as the author mentions because you wont be focusing on replacing it sentence by sentence but more organically coming up with better sentences to use. Although sometimes that dramatic of an action doesn't need to be taken.
      "I don't want to die" is a chapter with not only a striking title but is also a very short and to the point chapter that is very powerful. It talks about the man that created the San Francisco Zen Center and how when he was about to die his last words to his friend was "I don't want to die." This is so moving because it was somebody that was the master of zen and the one time he allowed himself to succumb to his emotions was to say that statement. It is very important for writers to listen to their emotions and really write just what you feel sometimes instead of writing what you think should be written in a circumstance. It sometimes can be more powerful to say what you feel than to say something planned and deliberate.