Freewriting

Getting Started: The Freewrite

Writing is a messy process. I have yet to meet a writer who is able to compose a beautifully crafted and perfectly correct piece of writing in one sitting. They simply do not exist. The better the idea, the more challenging it is to wrestle that idea into neat, grammatically correct sentences. The trick to producing a good piece of writing your reader will enjoy reading is making sure that correctness doesn’t stifle creativity. This is where the freewrite comes in.

“Zero Drafts”

The freewrite is an exercise that allows you to get your ideas out on the page free of the filter that wants to correct and judge everything about your writing. You have no goal in your writing other than filling up the page or writing down the clock. The freewrite draft is what writing expert Lois Bouchard refers to as your “zero draft.” “Zero drafts” are often unshaped messes of misspelled words, misplaced modifiers, and sentences with no clear beginning or end. Most writers begin with some version of a “zero draft” or “garbage draft” or “crappy draft.” It doesn’t matter what you call it, what matters is that you write it. No one needs to read your “zero draft,” so don’t worry about your audience at this stage. No one is going to judge you or your writing—at least not yet, anyway. Swat away the annoying voice in your head that is worried about what others will say; he is not invited to your freewrite party. Make a mess. Have fun with the process. Think of your freewrite as finger-painting only with words instead of paints. Don’t worry. This is your “zero draft.” You’ll get to clean it up when you start working on your first draft.  For now, you’re just trying to get some ideas down on the page.

Generating Ideas

The freewrite exercise allows you to start getting your ideas out of your head and onto the page. But that’s just the beginning. The more you freewrite, the better you get at freewriting; and the better you get at freewriting, the more you will begin to experience the act of writing as helping you make connections you didn’t see before you began writing. This is what most writers refer to when they talk about writing as an act of discovery. Or, as E.M. Forster put it, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Once you start freewriting, you can free yourself from thinking about your thoughts and start writing your thoughts directly on the page. I like to think about freewriting as getting myself out of the way so I can see what I really think. It doesn’t have to make sense at this stage; it just has to get on the page. You can make sense of it later, or not. Right now, your only job is to write. It’s all about generating material for you to work with later.

How to Freewrite

I’ve read several different prompts for freewriting, but the best has to be the classic from writing expert Peter Elbow in his book Writing Without Teachers.

Don’t stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing. Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing. If you can’t think of a word or a spelling, just use a squiggle or else write, ‘I can’t think of it.’ . . . The easiest thing is just to put down whatever is in your mind. If you get stuck it’s fine to write ‘I can’t think what to say, I can’t think what to say’ as many times as you want; . . . The only requirement is that you never stop.

I find that freewriting by hand on a sheet of paper is more effective. I think it has something to do with keeping my hand moving across the sheet of paper and filling the sheet up with my inky scrawl. I can make those squiggles Elbow refers to and I feel less pressure to spell correctly when I don’t have autocorrect underlining every other word I write. I don’t have a delete key there to censor me. I keep these “zero drafts” hidden away in notebooks where no one but me will ever see them. I return to them to see where I started and what I have forgotten by the time I’m working on my later drafts. When I’m in the process of writing these “zero drafts,” they feel like garbage and crap; but when I return to them at a later date, I am amazed by the number of hidden gems I find. If you type your “zero drafts” on the computer, create a folder where you can save them for a later date.

Time or Length

You can set up your freewrite one of two ways: write for time or for length. There is no right or wrong way to do this. The important thing is to find out which way works best for you. When you write for time, you set yourself a limit of usually 15 minutes. Just set the timer on your phone for 15 minutes and start writing. If you have a longer project and you need to make progress in terms of length, you can decide to write until you’ve completed at least two pages or 500 words or whatever goal you’ve set for the day. The key is to start writing and keep writing. You’ll revise it later.

Focused or Free

What should you write about? That’s up to you. You can use your “zero draft” as a way to get your thoughts down on the page, or you could focus on a specific topic or question. One of my favorite freewrites is to copy down a quote I want to use in my writing and then use that as a starting point for my freewrite. Why did I choose this quote? What do I think it means? What does it imply? How does it mean what it means? What do I think about the meaning? What do I think about the implications? How might critics respond to this quote? What’s missing in the quote? What is not being said? Why does it matter? And so on and so on. When I’ve used this technique in my writing classes, I’ve seen it help students transition from using quotes to state what other people think to using quotes in conversation with their own thoughts about the topic.

Just Write It

The most important thing is to just sit down and write. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Just commit to 15 minutes of writing and get started. Once you get started, you will have something to work with. And once you have something to work with, you will be that much closer to your final draft.