What I Learnt From 30 Days Of Free-Writing
It’s definitely not as easy as “just write.”
As an entirely self-taught writer (read: never had education, coaching, mentorship or guidance of any kind when it came to my writing), I’ve had to rely a lot on the Internet for writing advice.
Some of it is pure gold, like Stephen King’s famous “kill your darlings”. Some of it is more on the fence, like “keep publishing your work”. Sure, that works in theory, but who’s going to account for my fierce protectiveness about the darlings that made it past the killing block?
But there was one writing tip that pretty much everyone on the Internet was talking about — nay, raving about — like it’s the holy grail of writing advice.
Free-writing.
For those who might not have come across this term, it’s exactly what it sounds like — freely writing down whatever comes to your head in one unbroken flow, for as long as you choose to write.
The idea behind free-writing is that you get your pent-up thoughts all out on paper. No planning, no back-and-forthing, no judgement. Just writing. While there doesn’t have to be a specific time duration involved, most writers like to set a timer for anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes for each free-writing session.
Personally, I was on the fence about this. To me, it didn’t seem productive to just ramble on paper without any kind of idea or format in mind.
But after attending a creative writing workshop whose instructors recommended it highly, I decided to give it a try.
For 30 consecutive days, I would fill two pages of my notebook every morning with free-writing. I chose to set a page limit rather than a time limit, as my hand tends to ache if I write too fast and I wanted to not give myself an excuse to throw down the pen and give up.
It works best after a mental stimulus of some sort
If your first action in the morning is to scroll through social media, you’re unlikely to get too many ideas worth writing about. In fact, your mind is likelier to get dulled by all the mindless consumption.
Instead, give your brain some stimulating input before you sit down to write. Read a few pages of a book or an article, or watch a classroom lecture or YouTube video on literary topics. I usually read first thing in the morning, but I’ve been taking Joyce Carol Oates’ course on the Art Of The Short Story on Masterclass.com, and watching her lectures over my morning coffee has helped to improve my free-writing immensely.
You’ll often end up writing variations of the same thing
I’ve found myself writing about lonely strangers and “look at me” and “I am the messiah of the unloved” multiple times. That could be because those are dominant themes in my head, or because when my mind is supposed to run riot without pause, it’s easier to just spill out variations upon a theme rather than dream up something new.
Thing is, once you go back and read over what you’ve written, it isn’t exactly groundbreaking stuff. Which is okay — if every free-writing session produced literary gems, writer’s block wouldn’t even be a thing. And perhaps your repetitions are a sign that this is a story that’s on your mind and you want to tell — which gives you a new project to work on consciously outside of the free-writing sessions.
It doesn’t have to be in the mornings
If you’re anything like me, you wake up groggy and unable to think beyond “where’s the coffee.” Given that, it’s likely that your mind is in no shape to write, and the last thing you should do is force it.
Wait until your mind is shaken out of its sleepiness and feels more like being creative — it could be after breakfast, after lunch, after your evening jog, whenever. The idea is that you actually do something with your free-writing — now’s not the time to force yourself to be a morning person because your favourite blogger said so.
There will be days you can’t “flow” beyond a couple of sentences
Look, it sounds ideal. Just putting pen to paper and writing anything and everything that comes to mind. But the truth is that sometimes our mind is just on snooze mode. It doesn’t want to flow. It wants to zone out. And then you’re reduced to writing “I can’t think of anything to write” seven times in succession.
Even the strongest proponents of freewriting will admit that that’s a waste of time and paper and ink. When that happens, you’re far better off turning the page and jotting down your grocery list. It isn’t “writing”, but at least it’s productive.
Some of what you write will be excellent material for new projects
Enough with the pessimism and on to the good stuff. Your free-writing will rarely follow one single train of thought or plot idea. You’ll usually explore one for about two or three sentences before jumping to something else. But out of all the random sentences you come up with, at least some will be worth keeping. And it doesn’t even have to be about one storyline.
Maybe one of your sentences includes a killer metaphor that you can incorporate into a story you’re working on. Or maybe there’s a piece of dialogue that inspires you to create a new character for your story. Heck, maybe it’s just a skinful turn of phrase or even an apt word.
Sometimes, the free flow will allow your mind to form associations it couldn’t have while you were consciously thinking. And it’s those “aha” moments that make the free-writing habit worth cultivating.
