I know I am enjoying writer Natalia Ginzburg immensely because I am doling out her writing to myself in little chunks. Savoring it.

This week for Women Write Their Lives class we are reading a bunch of essays from her book, A Place to Live.  So good, but not surprisingly, what is really resonating is her essay about writing called “My Craft.” I will contain myself to four passages from it:

I know that writing is my craft. When I sit down to write, I feel supremely at ease, supremely sure of being in my own element; I use tools that are familiar and habitual and feel firm in my hands. If I do anything else, study a foreign language, say, or try to learn history or geography or stenography, if I try to speak in public or knit or travel, I’m in pain, constantly wondering how others manage those things.

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I had written my story on squared paper and I felt happier than I had ever felt in my life, rich with words and ideas.

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In our writing, memories of the past continually rise to the surface; our own voice continually reverberates, and we are powerless to silence it.

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I couldn’t even begin to imagine my life without my craft. It has always been there, it has never deserted me for a moment; even when I thought it lay dormant, its vigilant, radiant eye was watching over me.