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Joyce Lin

Professor Ogden

ENGL 001A

4 August 2022

Wild Mind Reflection

In Natalie Goldberg’s novel Wild Mind, readers learn the many methods to write and how

to improve on one’s writing skills. As readers, we learn that there are rules to writing; keep your

hand moving, lose control, be specific, don’t think, and don’t worry about punctuation, spelling,

or grammar (Goldberg 23-26). We learn that writing is practically something fundamental, and

that anyone can write if they put their mind to it and follow these rules. There are so many ways

in which people can write, and one way to improve would be to freewrite, letting all your

thoughts and ideas flow out of your mind freely. Not only does Natalie Goldberg describe these

methods of writing, she also provides these short “Try This” activities at the end of many

chapters, which challenges the reader to free write and do timed writing tasks.

Throughout this English 001A course, I have learned so much and gained knowledge on

not only writing, but also reading. When reading Natalie Goldberg’s novel Wild Mind, two key

takeaways I had from reading her book would be her “Try This” activities and how the mind can

be thrown off track by something called the “monkey mind” (Goldberg 69). Of course, these two

takeaways weren’t the only ones that stood out to me but these two were the first to come to

mind when thinking about her book.

As I worked on assignments that required reading Goldberg’s Wild Mind, I found that

everytime I read a chapter or two of her book, I was tasked with one of her “Try This” activities.

I vividly remember all the times I completed these tasks. Sometimes I would be asked to do
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some sort of timed writing, where I would have 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Other times I

would be doing tasks that required me to write for a couple minutes, stand up and walk around,

and then back to writing for a couple minutes. These exercises, though quite surprisingly, helped

me improve my writing skills. I’ve never been big on writing, and yet after doing these activities,

I found myself slowly enjoying doing these “Try This” tasks. I’ve always wanted to push myself

to read and write more, knowing that practice comes with improvement. After reading this novel

and doing these small activities, I have managed to fulfill this goal of mine and finally see

progress in my writing and reading.

What is the monkey mind? I would ask myself this before I read Natalie Goldberg’s

book. I learned that the “monkey mind”, or some call part of the conscious mind, was something

that could lead to the mind straying off from what it really wanted, leaving it confused (Goldberg

70). Then I realized that not only did I completely understand what Natalie Goldberg was trying

to convey as she wrote this, I realized that I had also been living with this “monkey mind” for

most of my life. I recalled the many times that I would be compelled to do something I really

wanted to do, but there would always be this voice which told me to “stop” or it said, “Don’t do

it. You’re not capable of doing that anyways.”. I was able to connect to this book on a deeper

level, and I was surprised that I felt so moved by what she wrote on how to overcome this

“monkey mind”.
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Works Cited Page

Goldberg, Natalie. “ProQuest Ebook Central.” ProQuest EBook Central, Open Road Integrated

Media, Inc., 1 Oct. 1990, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fjpw/home.action.