Book Talk: Wild Mind

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg

 

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg young adult text that teaches a unique and special method of writing. She sees writing as a craft and takes it to another level: Wild Mind. Natalie describes the “wild mind” as the creative part of your mind that is “raw, full of energy, alive and hungry.” Natalie’s book is a helpful guide to when to find time to write, how to create and discover your own personal style, how to make your pieces come alive, and how to overcome difficult challenges that avid writers tend to face, such as writers block. Natalie also uses writing exercises for the reader to do that gets their pen moving and their thoughts provoking.

I chose this text because I read it in one of my composition classes, and I fell in love with it. I think it is such an important text to read in any literature or composition class, and as a teacher of writing I want to share this educational and creative text with my students. It can be applicable I any English class. No matter if you’re an experience writer or not, reading this text will help you grow so much as a creative writer and push you to limits you didn’t know you had. My rationale for choosing this book is it opens up your eyes to new ideas and ways of thinking about writing that it has the potential to be helpful and valuable to everyone. Whether you love to write, hate to write, or love it but aren’t the best, this book has advice and tools for you to make writing fun and interesting – not just for educational purposes, but for fun as well. I think this text is appropriate for high school students, because it is a fairly easy read. Also, high school is where a lot of writing skills come into play, because students are preparing for college. I think the steaks are set high enough in high school to wear this book is appropriate to provide workshops and effective advice, but also a good time for students to express their individuality when it comes to exploring their writing styles. I would say 11^th and 12^th graders would be perfect ages to read this book, because they are mature enough to appreciate it and confident enough in their schooling career to be able to try the different exercises Goldberg provides.  

The teaching ideas I have in mind for this book are to have students get a writing journal and I will assign pages to be read for each class day. If there is a “try this” exercise in the reading for that night, students will try it and write it down in their journal. This will serve as sort of a free-write for them to write about whatever comes to their mind. Instead of a reading journal, I could also just open up class with the “try this” exercises and have them do a free-write in the beginning of class every day that serves as a warm-up. I would also start of each class period with having an open class discussion about what happened in the chapters that were assigned the previous night, and ask students what they thought about Goldberg’s ideas and workshops.

I can only think of a few possible obstacles to teaching this text. The first one that I come up with is the possibility that students might not value it as much as I’d hope. Also, if students don’t take the exercises and the “try this” workshops seriously, they won’t have any effect on them and the text could become irrelevant. As long as students are keeping the writing exercises appropriate, I truly don’t see any problem the administration nor parent could have with this text.