We’re reading to become better writers, I hope you’ll join us on this journey! Details on the book club can be found under the Book Club Tab above. I will link each week’s discussion there as well.
Our first pick is Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg. If you want more information on Natalie and some video interviews with her please visit Open Road Media. Some of you asked, it is available in all versions of digital reader. See the Open Road Media site for details.
Chapter 13: Accept Ourselves
“Don’t throw away your writing”
How often do we virtually do this? I think it’s so much easier now with so much (most) of my writing being done on a computer to just backspace, backspace, backspace over whatever I have written instead of letting it sit and editing it later. After reading this chapter I really want to establish a writing notebook. I would love to be able to quickly flip through and see how my writing has changed. According to Natalie doing this allows us to free the critique and see the “whole mind”
Another important takeaway:
“Write the Truth”
As someone who writes about the “sticky stuff” this is so important to me. Yes, it’s hard and sometimes I need to pretend no one is reading but it’s what we need to do. It also needs to be said that my truth is not your truth (obviously outside of verifiable facts like the sky is blue), we live individual lives and have different experiences/truths.
I loved her “Try this” for this chapter. Take 30 minutes and re-write that dreaded and often bland what I did on my summer vacation. Take 30minutes and tell it like it was, not the sanitized boring version you turned in. I am totally going to do this (watch for a post this week!)
Chapter 14: Fresh
So this is the chapter door those of you participating in NaNoWriMo! She gets into the nitty-gritty of how she uses free writing to write and enhance her novel-writing. AS someone who just recently started toying with the idea of novel-writing I found this so interesting!
Two quotes that I want to share (in case your not reading – shame! go get the book!)
“Writing is the act of discovery”
This is so true. I frequently say I write/blog because it’s cheaper than therapy! Ann Voskamp also said something along these lines at Relevant, she likened writing to grappling along in the dark finding your way into what you believe and understand. That is certainly true for me.
Lastly she touches again on handwriting as opposed to typing out your words. I have always loved writing my thoughts out on paper and have found myself doing it more and more. She sees your hand moving across the page as a direct connection to your heart:
“All good writing comes from the body and is a physical experience”
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