On Freewriting

The Imperfectionist: The freewriting way of life

Freewriting challenges the yearning for control in a rather obvious fashion. It requires you to abandon the method of “figuring out something good or clever to say before writing anything down” and to replace it with “writing things down without knowing if anything good or clever will come out.”

The basics of freewriting, from Peter Elbow’s 1973 book Writing Without Teachers:

1. Choose an idea you’d like to explore, a problem to solve, or a piece of writing to work on; or maybe you lack one, in which case the goal of this session can be to come up with one.

2. Set a timer for a short period. Ten minutes is more than enough to begin with.

3. Write without stopping or deleting. There’s no need to go especially fast; what matters is simply that the process is continuous rather than halting. If you can’t think of anything to write, write that.

4. Undergo a massive existential crisis as the freewriting process collides with your preference for staying in control, performing for others’ approval, and never making an embarrassing mess. (Elbow doesn’t exactly put it this way, but he certainly anticipates such reactions.)

5. At the end of the session, discover – almost always – that the chaos on the page contains at least a few decent ideas, insights or turns of phrase you could never have arrived at by any other means.

Related:

P.S. Come see me headline in Arlington, VA on Friday, August 21. Tickets here.