The Art of Freewriting

Free Writing is the best way to develop your style as a writer, and learn your own unique voice. But most people do it wrong! Is there a wrong way to do it, you ask? If your aim is to get better at writing, then YES! Like when you lift weights. Your technique matters! If you don’t lift properly lifting can hurt you more than it helps you. So where do most writers go wrong? You’re not freeing your mind. Not truly. Free writing is when a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism. It’s like prepping the block of marble before chipping away the unnecessary to make something beautiful. When you free write, you can’t allow your pen OR your thinking to pause. You have to write EXACTLY how your brain thinks. It jumps rapidly, topic to topic, not necessarily making sense or being completely coherent.. But somehow staying connected. Recording the real, raw thoughts is important. It allows you to study and admire the unique process of thinking that makes up YOU. Furthermore, since this is one of the most important ways you develop your muscles as a writer, it’s a very important part of the writing process. For most writers, I heavily recommend free writing multiple times in a day, at different times in a day. Trying to free write for at least 15 minutes in the morning, afternoon, and night gives you a thorough interpretation of your brain’s capacity for thinking at different levels. When it’s sleepy, when it’s wide awake, when it’s just waking up. I also heavily recommend Free Writing a few minutes before working on your main projects. This would be the writing equivalent of stretching or doing yoga before a long marathon or an intense work out. Do you already use Free Writing? How does it help you? What are some of the things you’ve learned about yourself and the world as you’ve been Free Writing?