Ep 178: The Writer at Work Use Freewriting to Give It Some Thought
My first university-level creative writing course used as the main text a book that, at that time, was a brand-new release: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg.\n\nAfter moving through the exercises in that book, I felt transformed. Goldberg introduced a simple concept that I\u2019d never heard of. It\u2019s commonplace today, a part of the lexicon of most creative writers.\n\nFreewriting.\nThe Life-Changing Magic of Freewriting\nThe practice of freewriting unleashed in me the memories, stories, images, and ideas that I hadn\u2019t yet reached when I sat down to write using conventional approaches of the time. I'd been making notes and lists, thinking and outlining, then trying to write into an outline. I was taught that approach, and it seemed sensible and efficient.\n\nMy work, however, was clunky, uninspired, unremarkable.\n\nGoldberg\u2019s invitation to freewrite\u2014to set a timer for, say, ten minutes and write, pen to paper, without stopping\u2014gave me a way to shimmy past my stifling editor-mind to what Goldberg calls \u201cfirst thoughts.\u201d\n\nWrite without stopping. Write without correcting commas or crossing out words. Write garbage without worrying who will ever read what you\u2019re putting down.\n\nAs I freewrote, I stopped editing my work and second-guessing myself. I blew right past the voices of criticism and tapped deeper thoughts, luring them to the surface.\n\nBefore freewriting, I was a nervous writer, stifled by all kinds of worries.\n\nHaving grown up with editor-parents\u2014and I mean that literally; they were both newspaper editors\u2014I tended to prejudge every idea, every sentence, reading each word as if picturing a red pen dangling over my page like the Sword of Damocles. Before a thought had a chance to breathe a single breath and stretch its legs, I\u2019d strike it out and pretend I\u2019d never entertained its existence.\n\nFreewriting led to a kind of self-discovery, and from that I was able to produce poetry with punch and narratives that held interest and dove deeper, below the safety of surface-level, where until then I\u2019d been dog-paddling my way through assignments.\n\nI wrote about struggles and questions and memories and dreams, exploring it all in hopes of finding something worth developing into a finished piece and sharing with others.\n\nThis tool more than any others powered my writing life forward.\n\nFreewriting freed me.\n\n\nThink, Then Write\nYears later, I hosted a family friend overnight. She was passing through town and we shared a meal and chatted about writing. Freewriting came up.\n\nI don\u2019t remember exactly what I said, but I\u2019ll bet I praised the way it frees the mind by skipping past the censor that shuts us down and allows us to draw from a deeper well of thought to produce more meaningful projects. I might have testified to its transformative effect on my life. I probably recommend it to her.\n\nShe\u2019d heard about it, she said. Then, when I seemed to have exhausted all I had to say about the merits of freewriting, she told me she had recently attended a small, intimate writer\u2019s retreat led by Madeleine L\u2019Engle.\n\nI was insanely curious what that was like. And I was insanely jealous, because Madeleine has been a hero of mine for decades. As a child I\u2019d read A Wrinkle in Time, riveted to the story, the characters, the message. When I later realized she\u2019d written nonfiction, I devoured her Crosswicks Journals and Walking on Water.\n\nThis family friend had the privilege of participating in a tiny writing retreat that left time for lots of interaction with Madeleine.\n\nTell me more!\n\nWell, she did. She said Madeleine would give the attendees a creative writing prompt, that always included this instruction or \u201crule,\u201d if you will: think as long as you want, but once you decide to start writing, write for only 30 minutes.\n\nSome people didn\u2019t think long before they wrote, while others devoted a long time to thinking, thinking, thinking before\u2026boom. They wrote the full thirty minutes, nonstop,