Break The Rules and Write For You

How to find your unfiltered, uncensored voice as a writer

The way you write when you’re taking notes is the most free you will ever write. No care for grammar, spelling, sentence construction, proper punctuation. There are no little squiggly lines marking your mistakes, or silent programs correcting you as you type. There is no he said-she said, you know who’s talking. There is no filter. No censor. Not a thought for the audience- or even if there could ever be an audience. No one will ever read these words but you- and you know what you mean.

What you write this way is not often fit for publication- because you’re not concerned with these trivial matters, a reader would likely be lost- stumble and fall trying to follow your chaotic thoughts- your unsaid assumptions- your half finished ideas. And a thing written this way will likely need a lot of polishing before it is able to be read- before it does the thing you want it to do- before it does anything.

I am not advocating against editing- editing is afterall where beauty comes from- where you turn the raw emotions and ideas into something you’re proud of- into something you want to put your name to. But you should never lose the ability to write just for you. To write as fast as the words will come- as fast as your pen can keep up- no form, no rules, no slowing down- no rereading- just write to see what comes out. To understand yourself. To tell yourself the story you wanted to hear. In the way that makes sense to you.

Once written- you can see if there is anything inside your madness. Anything that can be excavated for more than it’s worth- prettied up, smoothed down and made ready for the blushing public- but even if there’s not- write for you.

Write longhand. Fuck the rules. You spend all day trying to write for others, trying to take the pieces of an idea from your mind and putting them on a page in a way that makes sense- give yourself a few minutes to just let it all go. Warts and all.

And sometimes- when you’re finished trying to turn your idea into a thing, it can lose something it had when it was just scribbles and misspelled words in your notes. Lose some of its intensity. Its edge. Its voice. Its unfiltered heart. Sometimes, in two pages of rushed handwritten notes, you can say something you can’t in 5000 neatly typed words, Grammarly checked and formatted to American Publishing standards.

Sometimes- the raw is the heart. The punk heart of your ideas- the out of tune guitars you scream over to make your unintelligible point- where all the audience can make out is your intention, your rage, your heart- and that’s all they need. Power. And emotion. And screaming that you care at someone who is screaming right back.

Your longhand private writing notes are your anarchist cookbook. So strap on your tartan trousers, spike up your mohawk and shove a safety pin through your ear- and just scream.

x

As you can probably tell from that introduction, the above prose was copied word for word from my longhand writing journal. Rereading it now, there are definitely parts I would prefer to edit, sentences that could benefit from more powerful word choice, better punctuation, and less rambling, but that would somewhat defeat the point. So here it stands, word for word, warts and all, as an example of the power you can find in longhand writing and the freedom of letting yourself write just for you.

I recently attended a short fiction writing class, and one of the first things we were told was to start keeping a daily writing journal. This is not uncommon advice in writing circles, I have already written an article about the benefits of writing every day, but the fascinating takeaway this time was how different a writer’s voice can be when writing a journal compared to their published work.

I used to think the difference was simply one of editing. The way we write for ourselves is unfinished, missing the polish and precision you get through the creation process, full of half-finished ideas, spelling mistakes, and hurried thoughts. I used to think the way you write in notes or journals was just a precursor to the ‘real’ work you eventually create from your collection of hastily written notes and half-formed ideas. Part of the writing process, but not Writing in and of itself.

But when you step back from the task of creating a finished piece, when you forget the end goal and look at the process of putting one word in front of the other, there is a hidden power to be found in the way you write for yourself. The way you write when no one is reading, when you’re not trying to craft an end result but simply writing for the sake of writing. It changes how you write. It changes how you think. It removes the shackles of grammar, spelling, taboo, or self-censorship and leaves only the most honest representation of your voice.

And you might find that voice is markedly different from the rest of your work. Editing is, after all, taking the rough threads of your ideas and making them more refined, making them sound the way you pictured when the idea first struck you. And while I am not saying that your private prose will ever be marketable in and on itself, or indeed readable by an outside audience, the art of writing with no filter, with no agenda, purely for the art of writing, is an invaluable skill that can improve so much more than just your cursive script.

For starters, No. Your personal writing journal does not need to be written in longhand. Phones or laptops are more than capable of getting the job done. Still, there are distinct advantages of writing longhand that make it a powerful medium for this particular exercise. Laptops are brilliant, I couldn’t write without them, but when it comes touninterrupted creativity, the pen is indeed mightier than the keyboard.

Firstly, how one writes longhand differs from the way one writes on a computer. Most of us can type much faster than we can write, meaning when you type, you spend less time thinking and more time writing. This can be beneficial when you want to get the words down before they turn to smoke, but it can also be a curse when you end up writing faster than you can think.

When you write longhand, the extra time it takes to get the words down gives you space to form your thoughts more clearly. The process, by default, forces you to slow down and focus on the exact words you’re using, the turns of phrase and the cadence, instead of the barrage of ideas you can capture while typing. It’s a different mindset, a different way of creating, and not surprisingly, it results in a different kind of writing.

Just like an oil painter switching tocharcoal, or a musician composing on an acoustic guitar instead of an electric one, the tools you use to create will affect the process of creation, and that process will craft a different result, even in the hands of the same artist.

The physical act of writing on paper changes the way we think. Sure, there are the well-discussed benefits of limiting creative distractions; not having access to your email, text, or goggle to instantly look up a question that comes to you in the middle of writing, and the myriad of other ways one can disappear time behind a screen. But even if you write on a blank computer disconnected from the internet, with your phone in the other room, hidden away and turned to silent, the way you think changes with a pen in your hand.

You’ll also find your voice change with the medium; your word choice, punctuation, and sentence structure altered by the tools. Personally, I use far more dashes when writing longhand; The dash symbol on my keyboard is more awkward to reach than the comma or full stop, so I’ve subconsciously trained myself not to use it in all the years I’ve spent writing on a laptop. These little changes may seem arbitrary, like formatting issues rather than creative choices, but they add up to create a different feel in your finished piece. A different voice. A different essence. An end result that sounds, sometimes, just a little more like you.

Another benefit of longhand is the momentum and direction with which it allows you to write.

No matter the writing software, computers come with auto-correct and spellcheckers that highlight errors as you write. These things are indispensable when editing, but when trying to get that initial first draft down on paper, the obnoxious highlighting draws your attention away from the sentence you’re building and makes you focus on the words you just wrote instead of the words you’re trying to write.

If you’re anything like me, as you type, you’ll find yourself repeatedly going back and correcting errors. The backspace button is so close that the momentum of your writing is constantly in motion, moving forward and back throughout the sentence as you correct and reword yourself. On a computer, you’re far more likely to stop and fix something, to tinker and polish before you’re finished, interrupting and derailing your train of thought.

When you write longhand, no blue squiggly lines call out your mistakes. Once the words are down, that’s it. You’re free to keep your work flowing, not constantly being drawn back to fix minor errors. You are forced to focus on the words coming out rather than the ones already written. Once you turn the page, your ideas are out of sight, out of mind. You can keep moving forward, keep letting the words come to you, and leave the editing for later.

But beyond the physical benefits of writing longhand, the forward momentum and slower creation process, there is a freedom in writing just for yourself that is hard to capture any other way.

When coming up with ideas for fiction or prose, when molding the spark of creativity into something we think we can write, we are inevitably affected by outside influence. Even before we get the first words down on paper, we think about how an audience might respond to our ideas, what a reader needs from us to understand our imagery, our intention. And while thinking of your reader is an essential part of writing, letting them into your head too early can lead to unintentional self-censorship before your ideas even make it to paper.

Discounting more challenging topics of self-censorship like societal taboos, strong language, or graphic imagery, the mere art of writing something you intend to be read will change the way you write. It has to. In the same way that your private thoughts are not the same as the things you say out loud, when we write for ourselves, there is an openness you will never achieve when you write for an audience. Whether you’re writing longhand or not, on your computer or in a journal, if you start with an audience in mind, how you think, how you write, and the whole craft of your writing will change.

With a pen and paper, it’s just you, no one else. No audience. No reader. No editor. No publicist. It’s you and your words. In a locked room. There is no end result or promise of editing. There’s just you and your ideas, as they come to you. Unfiltered. Unedited.

And when you let yourself write this way, you’ll find a voice, a candor, that might surprise you.

Keeping a longhand writing journal is not the same as keeping a diary. We’re not talking about venting your inner frustrations or detailing precisely what you did that day. Your work can include these elements if you wish, but a writing journal is more about exploring the craft and giving your creativity a place to run free.

I am not saying you shouldn’t try to make your writing good. That you should throw all form and function to the wind and write whatever comes to mind. In fact, I’m saying quite the opposite; Make it the best it can be. Make it beautiful. Make it musical. Make it indulgent and fantastic. Paint yourself the most glorious pictures, tell yourself the most outrageous stories. Write in a way that makes you happy, that makes the author inside you happy. Dissect your surroundings, pick apart your feelings, and do so without considering anything other than the craft. There is no purpose. There is no reader. There is just the story you want to tell and the way you want to tell it.

Scribble ideas as they come to you; dialogue, character studies, snippets of scenes and setting. Describe interactions, real or imaginary, places or people that spark your curiosity. Capture ideas at different parts of your day, and see how the hour or location changes the way you write, the way you think. Write when you’re tired. Write when you’re rushed. Write when you have a thousand other things you need to do or when writing is the last thing you feel like doing. Write whatever interests you at that moment, whatever stokes the fires of your creativity, and don’t get hung up on what it is, who it’s for, or what it has the potential to be.

It’s for you. That’s all that matters.

And if you reread those words later, after a few weeks, months, or even years, and find something beautiful, use it. Take that emotion, that slice of life, and see if you can mold it into something more.

Right now, as I work, I’ve spent over two thousand words trying to capture the emotion I felt when I wrote that original entry. My finished piece may be longer, more polished, more accessible for a reader, and far more grammatically accurate, but is it better? I honestly don’t know. I’ll leave that for you to decide.

As the original entry explains, in its disjointed and heavy-handed way, sometimes, when you’re finished turning your idea into a thing, you can find that something has gotten lost in the process. The intensity of the dialogue, the intimate emotion, the immediacy you felt when you wrote it gets watered down and lost, and you find you prefer the hastily scrawled notes to the finished result. Like an impressionist’s first few lines on the canvas, all emotion and idea, the sketch ends up better than the final painting.

But is that not the integral point of art? And one of the hardest things we do as writers? To try and take those raw emotions, those beautiful ideas, and find a way to present them back to our readers in a way they can understand. To capture that intimacy, that fervent emotion, in a polished, functional piece of work. Sometimes it falls flat. Sometimes the sketch ends up lost in translation. But the process and practice is immeasurably valuable in your journey as a writer. Capturing the raw. Putting your ideas into words in as many ways as you can, and then analyzing your work, discovering what gives it that spark, and working out how to do that on purpose.

So. Find a notebook, a scrap piece of paper, or the back of a bank statement you have yet to open, and start writing for no one else but you. Write what makes you happy, in a way that makes you happy, and ignore all the rules about how you think you’re supposed to write. Write messy. Write scattered. Write the voice that no one ever gets to hear but you.

There is no right or wrong. There is no purpose.

There is just a pen and your ideas, and a blank page waiting to be filled.

About The Author

Franky Seymour writes things you might consider stories.

She’s never in the place you left her, but can likely be found somewhere along the Pacific Northwest. She writes fantasy, fairytales, and stories that hold your hand as they lead you into the dark, and can occasionally be caught doing ‘real’ work behind the wheel of an ambulance. Her favourite trick is to tell you a story you don’t realise is a story until after you’ve finished reading it. Consider yourself warned.

You can find more of her work on her website, connect over on LinkedIn, or shoot her a message about anything from worldbuilding to wanderlust.

Originally published at https://frankyseymour.com on June 26, 2023.