Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

Nanao Sakaki, who translated Issa’s haiku, said, “Not gifted with genius but honestly holding his experience deep in his heart, he kept his simplicity and humanity.” That is how Issa wrote his haiku; that is how he got his style. Nothing fancy. He digested who he was: a human being with human experiences.

feel, I don’t feel.” I use these for warm-ups. It stretches my mind in positive and negative directions, in obvious and hidden places, in the conscious and the unconscious. It also is a chance to survey my mind and limber me up before I direct my thoughts to whatever I am working on.

Style requires digesting who we are. It comes from the inside. It does not mean I write like Flannery O’Connor or Willa Cather, but that I have fully digested their work, and on top of this or with this I have also fully digested my life: Jewish, American, Buddhist woman in the twentieth century with a grandmother who owned a poultry market, a fath

What is the purpose of this? Most of the time when we write, we mix up the editor and creator.

4. Don’t think. We usually live in the realm of second or third thoughts, thoughts on thoughts, rather than in the realm of first thoughts, the real way we flash on something. Stay with the first flash. Writing practice will help you contact first thoughts. Just practice and forget everything else.

Over and over I have done timed writings beginning with “I remember,” “I am looking at,” “I know,” “I

6. You are free to write the worst junk in America.

Human isolation is terrible. We want to connect and figure out what it means to write. “How do you live? What do you think?” we ask the author. We all look for hints, stories, examples.

Finally, don’t worry about style. Be who you are, breathe fully, be alive, and don’t forget to write.