Book Review: Wild Mind

Title: Wild Mind

Author: Natalie Goldberg

Publisher: Bantam

Date: 1990

ISBN: 0-0553-34775-6

Length: 238 pages

Quote: "Life is not orderly...What writing practice, like Zen practice, does is bring you back to the natural state of mind."

In between Writing Down the Bones, which introduced the idea of writing practice, and Riding Wild Horses Home, which discussed the idea of editing whatever is publishable in all that practice writing, comes Wild Mind, which basically encourages writers to keep practicing. 

This writing is still being done primarily for personal growth purposes. Goldberg encourages us to wallow in the details of our memories and experiences that editors usually don't want to read. Somewhere in a writer's life these details need to find words, she says. She gives the example of a writer who really wants to write about something observed in a bar where the writer was out late drinking alcohol, but this writer doesn't think people need to know that the writer went to a bar, so the writer edits the story prematurely with changes that cut off the whole point and purpose: "Last night, I drank a glass of milk and went to bed early." So, Goldberg says, go ahead and write about going to the bar, getting drunk, having inappropriate feelings about people you do or don't know...admit it if you were the one who was thrown out of the bar... Commenting later, I would add: Personal and subjective though good blogs are, a blog is not a good place for this type of writing. Write it on paper and keep it locked out of sight until you're ready to pick out any real treasures in the pile and burn (or compost) all that paper. Blogs are for sharing brutally honest opinions about books, not for describing exactly how it felt to do something that someone inclined to sue you might not otherwise be able to prove that you did.

Goldberg's teaching style is personal, illustrated with bits from her own life. Some readers might think Wild Mind gives us too much information about her; more of the original audience probably thought she was right to continue the stories she'd already told them. Well, she was a classic 1960s hippie and did well enough with it to stick with it. 

Wild Mind is definitely a fun read, written in a witty and likable voice, and its suggestions for personal, not-originally-meant-for-publication, free-form writing practice are definitely fun to work through. Will it help writers become published, rich, and famous? In the long run I think it might; having a place to stash all the emotional drama of our lives can help us detach long enough to write things that other people want to read. Eventually, having all our own emotional drama written out can help us decide which stories are worth fictionalizing, if we choose to write novels.