Wild Minds, Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg author of Writing Down the Bones.
I was hot. The bright sun bounced its heavy rays against my skull. It weighed me down and made my brain thrum. The querying process was giving me heat stroke and sapped me of my desire to sit down and write. I picked up Goldberg’s book, and like a tall glass of lemonade, ice cubes clanking and jingling encouragement, I drank deeply from “Wild Minds.”
Rejections, some very nicely worded, some terse and impersonal, came in daily. Three agents asked for a full. I never heard from them again. Each day my husband and children would ask, “Did you sell your book?” Each day the, “No. Not today,” felt more degrading.
Goldberg (p. 172) “Success is different from love. I mixed them up. I thought if I wrote a book I’d get the attention I had wanted a very long time ago from my parents for just being alive and being myself. That wasn’t the only reason I wrote. I wrote because I felt whole and alive… I was complete. I created something from myself and nothing was wanting. That was the original flame. It was good enough, but along the way I mixed it all up. I thought it could heal the world; it could heal me; it could do everything, because I felt so good when I wrote.”
I read that and I said, “Amen.” I thought I could write and because it felt like breathing, because it felt like life, I thought it should be easy to share my joy with the world at large. Boy, have I gotten the wind knocked out of me. I needed Goldberg to pick me up, brush me off, and ask me if I was okay. There is no petting and no finger wagging, Goldberg is heavily influenced by her Zen training. It shows on every page.
She asks us writers to go deep and be brave. She talks a lot about monkey-mind, for example.
Goldberg (p 35) This is why I tell students, “You don’t know what you wrote until a few weeks later when you have some distance.” With that distance, conscious mind isn’t so fearful of wild-mind. Reading your work later is a chance for wild mind and conscious mind to meet…When the path’s meet there is acceptance, peace, nonaggression. Imagine monkey mind as a befuddled soldier who took the wrong route on the way to the battlefield and arrives after the war is over. He sits down on the battlefield, trying to make sense of the raw victories and defeats.”
Goldberg (p 28) “What I learned…is that there is a quiet place in us below our hip personality that is connected to our breath, our words , and our death.”
Beyond the esoteric, Goldberg does offer concrete advice.
She encourages daily writing practice of ten minute intervals. 10 minutes of “I remember” followed by ten minutes of “I don’t remember.” Ten minutes of “I think,” ten more minutes of “I don’t think.” The yin side. The yang side.
Write down your dreams every morning.
One whole chapter is devoted to not using the word “very.” One of my teachers cautioned me not to use the word “just.” I went back in my MS and found 167 of them and only one needed to be there. Just sayin’. I went back and looked at both of my MSs, quite sure that I had not fallen into the “very” trap. I was VERY wrong. I very much depended on the “Very” as an intensifier. I think Goldberg was right, it really watered everything down. It’s much more honest and in your face to say, “He was angry,” than to say “He was very angry.”
Another chapter was devoted to taking out the word “because.” I looked over my MSs again to see how badly I had misused the word. I took a few out. I left a few in – just because. She tells me not to get mad at my children because they pull me away from my novel.
She suggests that at the end of a writing session that we do something that signals we are transitioning back into our lives…drink a glass of water, take a shower or a walk.
She says we should write in community - Goldberg (p123) “One day after we had known each other for a while –Jim was ten years older than I, a veteran poet –he turned to me. “Who gave you permission to be a poet? Was it Allen Ginsberg?” I had studied with Ginsberg the summer before. “ Someone along the way has to give you permission.” “No,” I shook my head. I was too shy to say, “No, Jim it was you.”… When I say “you ask permission,” I do not mean you have to go to someone higher up the totem pole and inquire, Is it okay if I write? Write before you ask anyone. As a matter of fact, never ask anyone; always write, but it is about relationship. You know another writer and this reinforces your own love and commitment and friendship.
I am so lucky to have this in my life. My dear friend Jamie Mason has been encouragement personified. She, without actually taking her sword and touching each of my shoulders to confer on me the Knighthood of the Pen, gives me permission to see myself as a writer. She talks to me as if I am a writer and this validation armors me as I go into battle to slay whatever dragon I face that day –be it a blank page or yet another “no, thank you.”
Finally, I took deep refreshing swallows of these passages:
Goldberg, (p.124) “ I sat on my bed thinking,’ I want to be a writer more than anything else. That’s what I want to leave to future generations. If I stay true to this path, I won’t be afraid to die when it’s my time.’”
Goldberg (p.136) “For a long time I thought it mattered. I thought my success in writing would finally win me love…Below that desire I found a cleaners one, a more grounded one: I wrote because I wanted to, because I wanted to step forward and speak. It’s okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn’t last. After a while you realize no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: ‘Well, I’m the sensitive type. I have to express myself.’ Do me a favor. Don’t be sensitive. Be tough. It will get you a lot further when you get rejected.”
And with that, I put my glass on the table, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, stood up and went inside to get back to work on my newest manuscript.
Happy writing,
Fiona
Fiona
