Writing Tip: Remember Your Wild Mind
A writer looks for âthe extraordinary magic in the everyday. For me, this statement from Flannery OâConnor is most important. No rules. Instead, revel in the sense that stories are all around us â in the detail, and in the past, present and future of our everyday world. Inspiration, ideas and creative energy come from chance encounters, accidental discoveries and the excitement of connecting: with our characters, our characters with the world, the imaginary with the ârealâ, with other writers and other texts.
There is magic to be found too in the everyday process of writing. Natalie Goldberg has written a book about the âwild mindâ of the writer. The way to imagine your wild mind is this: put a marker pen in your pocket and fetch a ladder from the shed. Take both down to the beach. For maximum joy, choose low tide at dusk in Autumn. Scramble down the shingle bank; take your shoes and socks off at the edge of the wet sand. Carry the ladder and head across the sand towards the distant scrawl of sea. When you reach the shallows, stop and prop up your ladder â on air, the wind, or someone who paddles or shrimps beside you in the lapping waves. Look up. Above you, roiling with cloud and sunset-tinged is your wild mind. Climb up to the top of the ladder and take out your marker pen. Put a dot on the sky. This dot in the sky is your worrying, editing, controlling and âconsciousâ mind, the part that says you canât write, you have nothing to say and you will never get published. Natalie Goldberg says âour job as writers is not to diddle around our whole lives in the dot but to take one big step out of it and sink into the big sky and write from there.â
So, remember your wild mind â that huge sky of the seascape â because in the âun-canninessâ of the process and the mystery of engagement with our âwild mindâ is also where, for the writer, the magic lies.
By:Jane Rusbridge
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