Ep 178: The Writer at Work–Use Freewriting to Give It Some Thought - a podcast by Ann Kroeker

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,

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