Freewriting

 

                                    Freewriting

Freewriting is one of our Consultants' favorite techniques for helping writers who cannot get started. Freewriting is analogous to the warm up you might do before exercising.

There is no "correct" way to freewrite, so try a variation of these steps:

• Begin with a blank computer screen and a watch, or the clock on the computer. Try not to use the phone clock, as it can be too distracting. Handwriting is fine too-freewriting involves generating words, not correcting them or getting just the right word.
• Set a time. Try one, five, or ten minutes. Longer times may not be that productive since free writing is a "warm up" for more focused writing.
• Begin to type or write about anything that occurs. Don't stop until the time is up.
• Then review what's written. Do any words stand out? Ideas that might work for the next project?

Focused freewriting follows the same process but begins with a topic:

• Put a topic at the top of a blank page.
• Set a time limit and begin free writing. This time, write down things that seem to be related to the topic. Don't worry about order of ideas or grammatical correctness. Don't worry if the ideas seem to be digressions. This is about generating ideas, not producing a finished work.
  
• When time is up, look over what is written. Pull out ideas and phrases that can be used later.
• Practice putting the freewriting into outline form. If you were to use the writing to begin a paper, which points would you make first? Second?
• Taken from: Freewriting

Excelsior Online Writing Lab describes freewriting as just what it says—writing freely, whatever comes into your mind, without caring about spelling, punctuation, etc. It’s a way to free up your thoughts, help you know where your interests lie, and get your fingers moving on the keyboard (and this physical act can be a way to get your thoughts flowing).

Try a series of timed freewritings. Set a timer for five minutes. The object is to keep your fingers moving constantly and write down whatever thoughts come into your head during that time. If you can’t think of anything to say, keep writing I don’t know or this is silly until your thoughts move on. Stop when the timer rings. Shake out your hands, wait awhile, and then do more timed freewritings. After you have a set of five or so freewritings, review them to see if you’ve come back to certain topics, or whether you recorded some ideas that might be the basis for a piece of writing.

Here’s a sample freewriting that could yield a number of topics for writing:
I don’t think this is useful or helpful in any way. This is stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m looking out of my window and it’s the end of may and I can see that white cotton stuff flying around in the air, from the trees. One of my aunts was always allergic to that stuff when it started flying around in the spring. Don’t know offhand what type of tree that comes from. That aunt is now 94 years old and is in a nursing home for a while after she had a bad episode. She seems to have one now every spring. It’s like that old tree cotton triggers something in her body. Allergies. Spring. Trying to get the flowers to grow but one of the neighbors who is also in his 90s keeps feeding the squirrels and they come and dig up everyone’s flowerbed to store their peanuts. Plant the flowers and within thirty minutes there’s a peanut there. Wonder if anyone has grown peanut bushes yet?  Don’t know . . . know . . .

Possible topics from this freewrite:

• Allergy causes
• Allergies on the rise in the U.S.
• Consquences of humanizing wild animals
• Growing your own

Taken from: https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/prewriting-strategies/prewriting-strategies-freewriting/