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. After moving through the exercises in that book, I felt transformed. Goldberg introduced a simple concept that I’d never heard of. It’s commonplace today, a part of the lexicon of most creative writers. Freewriting. The Life-Changing Magic of Freewriting The practice of freewriting unleashed in me the memories, stories, images, and ideas that I hadn’t 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. My work, however, was clunky, uninspired, unremarkable. Goldberg’s invitation to freewrite—to set a timer for, say, ten minutes and write, pen to paper, without stopping—gave me a way to shimmy past my stifling editor-mind to what Goldberg calls “first thoughts.” Write without stopping. Write without correcting commas or crossing out words. Write garbage without worrying who will ever read what you’re putting down. As 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. Before freewriting, I was a nervous writer, stifled by all kinds of worries. Having grown up with editor-parents—and I mean that literally; they were both newspaper editors—I 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’d strike it out and pretend I’d never entertained its existence. Freewriting 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’d been dog-paddling my way through assignments. I 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. This tool more than any others powered my writing life forward. Freewriting freed me. Think, Then Write Years later, I hosted a family friend overnight. She was passing through town and we shared a meal and chatted about writing. Freewriting came up. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’ll 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. She’d 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’s retreat led by Madeleine L’Engle. I 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’d read A Wrinkle in Time, riveted to the story, the characters, the message. When I later realized she’d written nonfiction, I devoured her Crosswicks Journals and Walking on Water. This family friend had the privilege of participating in a tiny writing retreat that left time for lots of interaction with Madeleine. Tell me more! Well, she did. She said Madeleine would give the attendees a creative writing prompt, that always included this instruction or “rule,” if you will: think as long as you want, but once you decide to start writing, write for only 30 minutes. Some people didn’t think long before they wrote, while others devoted a long time to thinking, thinking, thinking before…boom. They wrote the full thirty minutes, nonstop,