Have you ever had the experience in which words just flow from your fingers? Essays or poems or other work just seems to appear on the page? You don’t struggle for ideas or for words; they just come. It’s easy, like a swimming stroke you’ve mastered or a sport you excel at. And you expect that all writing will be like that from now on. I think I was in 11th grade the first time I remember experiencing this. The essay was on The Return of the Native or maybe Pride and Prejudice, a classic, in any case. It was a Friday evening (no comments, please) and I decided to see what I could do on this essay. And it all came out. And it was good! I was amazed and excited and relieved. And kind of looking forward to the next assignment.

But the next essay didn’t come so easily. I didn’t know what to say. The supporting examples didn’t jump from my pen to the paper. I had to think. Hard. It wasn’t fair! I thought I’d gotten past that problem. After all, when I learned the crawl, I didn’t have this much trouble with it, even on an off day.

I continued and continue to struggle with writing, but I’ve learned a few tricks to handle it. First, sometimes you just have to do it, just write and don’t think about what you’re writing. Freewrite. Write about anything. Write the same word over and over. This has become increasingly popular and recommended over the last decade or so by people like Peter Elbow and Natalie Goldberg. “Don’t take your pen off the paper,” they say. “Keep your pen moving.” Excellent recommendations. Of course, much of what come out is crap; that isn’t the point. The point is that in that crap, you very well may find a gem—and uncut gem, but a gem nonetheless. When I’m using a computer, I find it’s easier if I have the writing either take up the whole screen or be dimmed completely out, so I’m not tempted to delete and correct errors and instead just keep moving. And what emerges surprises me. And different things emerge when I handwrite and when I typewrite. (I can’t be completely sure of this because there is no way to do a proper experiment, but I’m quite sure.)

Freewriting is a type of prewriting, of preparing to write, usually and essay or a narrative, of getting ideas and associations down. Other types of prewriting involve lists and mind maps and outlines (broad ones work well for me; heavily detailed ones don’t). There are many others that I’m not going to get into now, mostly because I can’t remember them right now.
All this writing sets your mind in motion. And it keeps going even when you’re not paying attention to it. I call it percolating. So you may feel like you’re procrastinating, but if you’ve put some conscious thought into what you have to write, your subconscious will help you out, so that when you return to your assignment, you may be surprised to find that more flows than you expected. But this rarely happens if you don’t do any of the prep or pre- work.

So enjoy those times when the writing emerges fully-grown—and expect to work the rest of the time.

Tags: Freewriting