A Curious Realizer Guide to Freewriting
Where the author tries two 15 minute freewriting exercises and is once again surprised by some of the results
Freewriting is something that many of us know about, either by word of mouth or intuition, but there’s only so much you can know about it without doing it1. Freewriting (also called free writing) is one of the curiosity topics I discussed in my review of the first step, Curiosita, of How To Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci by Michael Gelb.
Freewriting (or free writing) is a type of writing where the person doing the exercise is working in the moment, recording whatever thoughts enter their mind. The goal is to literally write anything that comes to mind without censoring your words so that any idea, no matter how odd or seemingly inappropriate, will be captured.
Freewriting - a simple approach to thought spewing
There’s two main guidelines for freewriting:
Set a time limit for each freewriting session (10 - 20 minutes per session seems to be a popular range)
Write whatever comes to mind and write as quickly as possible (whether you are using pen and paper or if you are typing).
By putting a time boundary on the writing session you make it seem less arduous, which is important because of the second guideline: fast, constant writing. The theory behind this is to write faster than your internal censor so it can’t interrupt you.
What is the internal censor? It’s that little voice that interrupts your work, telling you that you’re not good enough, that your work is substandard and that you are wasting your time. Steven Pressfield refers to this as Resistance, anthromorphizing these mental tendencies into an opponent that can be battled. It may have the voice of an adult or peer who criticized you when you were a kid.
Freewriting helps you get past the internal censor by outrunning it. Don’t allow yourself to stop, don’t allow yourself to object, just write through it. Write like hell! Let the inner censor catch you if it can, which it can’t do if you write blindingly fast, whatever enters your mind leaves it onto paper or screen. You are, temporarily, the Flash of writing when you are in a freewriting groove.
Freewriting is not a free pass to great writing though. Freewriting tends to generate a lot of, well, crap. Gibberish even. You might scratch your head after a freewriting session, trying figure out what you were trying to say. You might wonder who the heck was writing anyway. The answer is, of course, you, but it’s a more primal, unfettered you, like your ID unleashed, smothered for too long, finally able to speak. It won’t be pretty, it may seem deranged but it will almost always bring something interesting to the surface.
Two freewriting experiments
Here’s a couple of freewriting examples that I’ve created recently to help demonstrate how this can work.
Experiment 1 - freewriting with pen and paper, sitting at my kitchen table, 15 minute freewriting session
Here’s the first example, done with pen and paper.
Freewriting is writing without rules, without stopping without questioning. Free writing is putting anything on the page that comes to mind. Who knows what will come out? I don’t. I’m just here moving the pen a floating consciousness takes over my arm and writes this stuff. No frigging idea who it works. It’s insane. Is someone controlling me when I write like the words or is it really me in charge? Dunno, I really just don’t. Smiley face, the clock from in my peripheral visions (left eye) looks like a smile of face. Journal to my right, green with a band. It’s a L1917. What color green is it? Not sure. It’s not a forest green it’s more green than the blue in forest green. I think I don’t if it’s correct or not. My glass, to my write (or right) put fake metalic covering, I mean body, I mean outer surface. Well, my, it is metal, still seems cold, plastic on the inside, black plastic that does nothing for temperature inside haha. Another blue notebook, L1917, a lighter blue, almost a baby Blue. Blue baby - how after doesn’t that happen these days? S. Taylor was a blue baby or so the story goes. He’s older than me so I couldn’t say for sure. 10:18 on the stop watch, is it only 5 minutes crazy that is. Wind in the background, hear the tress and leaves waving in the wind, cool breeze just barely reaching into the kitchen. My fingers are already getting sore, cramping slightly from holding my pen. God I love these pens. Sharpie 0.5 S Gel. Moves greatest, love the ink. Black black black. Oh shit, the end of the pages, gotta shift over now.
What now? Paused for a sec, a little bit of relief on my hand fingers. Getting a bit sore again but oh well that’s the pain of the craft. Righting faster and looser supposed to be a good sign I guess. Free, free writing (couldn’t resist that joke). It’s all spilling out coming from somewhere at high speed. Or not slow speed. In slow motion sometimes you get thinted [no idea what this word is!] by [next 2 words are gibberish] these words are just flowing into my head and I have no idea where they come from. It’s like someone offstage is reading me my lines and I’m just transcribing. Transcribing. What a beautiful words. Well, not beautiful but certainly unusual. Not every day you use a word like transcribing. Interesting, though: when you are thinking how often do you have to sit and think and consciously form the words before you speak them. Most of the time you don’t. They just come out If you are good you may have some control over what comes out but it feels like you are thinking too fast to control what comes. Like when you’ve memorized and rehearsed your lines for a play enough they just flow out naturally. But how can you pre-rehearse conversations that you’ve never had? Does this mean you are really thinking on your feet or in fact have you already had every conversation or thought that you’ve ever have and the normal process is just unconsciously blurting it out, follow a script that you never knew you had.
And so on on so on, this is free writing. I have no idea who has the script but if you’re not a religious person you might conclude that you are the one making up the script. But how does that happen? This is one of life’s great mysteries the creation and spooling out of these mystery scripts that non one told us were there but they are available if we really need them we just need to get out of the way and let them emerge w/o holding them back. FREE WRITING. THE END.
You never really know what you’re going to get when you freewrite. I had to reread the exercise results and clarify what I had actually written. There’s a lot of, well, crap in this example, but here’s a few things that I found interesting:
the phrase the pain of the craft
contrasting freewriting against the lines of a play script
the idea that every conversation you have is something that you’ve previously memorized and learned, even if it’s a mystery to you. or that you are writing a script as you go in a conversation.
Experiment 2 - freewriting on my laptop PC, sitting in my living room the next day, 15 minute freewriting session
The second experiment was completely typed.
Typing and knowledge management. I’m typing for this freewriting session because I have this bias and I want to check it out. I think that writing by hand is better because it feels more natural like a more natural connection between my brain and ,y typing but it’s definitely slower to writing by hand. i' have to resist the urtge to correct my teyping for this exercise because i want to go as fast as possible f so i wil skip both captilzation and punctuation unless it really makse sense andd dammit ai am alreayd self correcting as a go here i should be able to ytype a lot faster than i can writne and so at tsome point i have to go as fast a possible ino order to tstop m inter editor and glet the thoughts flow out normally but the trugh is that i am a messy type having to self correct a lot when i tye type this is a habit and it actually slows me down which is something that i’ve never considered before so now i am trying something different i am not looking at the screen as a i type which will be even messier but i will be less tempted to edit what i am writing so this is also fieels like another tkkdid [kind] of connection to m brain my brain as i type it’s faster for sure when you stop looking at the dscreen and worrieng about how it will looks llook good thing a i ahve am a toucht typist because i dont ahve to hunt and peck hunt and peck what an intereseting term do chicchkicekns [chickens] type type i dunno what if i am hitting the wrong keys just checked not i seem to be working fine you know that this is actually a pretty decent way to capture the thoughts quickly but is it wrong no actually this also eels [feels] like a ntual [natural] connection of shorts to my unconscious nmind but it doesn’t ieven feel impresimpersonal [impersonal] that i thought it might i’m staying [staring?] at a small hole in my seealing ceiling from a hothook that was put there years ago to handhang something i dont’ remember what a i wonder if it is a hole for somall insinsecdts [small insects] to hend the room? god I hope not. of course not, hthis is just my brain on freewriting no one every warned you about the dangers of freewriting on your brain and i think it thisi thisi this is like a james joyce novel of is it really i haven’t read a full james joyce novel that i can recall onanother ceiling light round and ornate held in place by three things what are they called latcheds or whatever ihear a r truck on the highway once again its 7 am and the trucks never stop i hear another car in the neighbourhood an early riser for a sunday morning the sound of the truck is fading in the distrance is it the dopler effect i don’t nknow if that is the scenice or not and then there was a pause as i tried fto think of the next thing to type how long has this been i dunno but i can hestill hear that high way truck off in the distance barrelling to wards its destingation on the way to deliver stuff to some undseen place where they really want the stuff maybe its food or oil or drrugs god who knows these days and when do i get to stop typing this stuff buecause if it feels like i’ve been typing forever allready and the lamp is on do i need it crow climbing about up the roof across the street lookking for something, did it just sscratch its bum with its beak now it it is looking around they always move their heads with jerks it’s kind of facinating no smotosmooth mvoves just jerks and i stopped for a minute that’s breaking the rules tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk and lett mee continutne typing while i can because i must be getting to the end of this exercise soon won’t it beep or something to tell me when i’m done i see a small spider, the crow has just cawed and i don’t know if its a greeting or a wrning the spider is too small for the crow to see wiwait another crow has answered the first one i wonder if they are talking to each other there wasa a reply if a crow was smart would it tell another crow thw where it saw foodd or maybe it is just boasting about being the only crow on top of a hohouse the crow’s body fre really bmoves like a bellows or a bladder emptying out withen it is cawing like really putting your whole body into it
i cheated i stopped to check therere’s more than a minute left to this but that minute and some is getting shorter and shorter as the crows do not don’t seem to keep taling to each other it’s fasicnation really but is there conversation and more substantial thatn a human’s conversation or are they just shooting the shit talking about last night’s crow comedy sketch that only treue crows can appreciate crow conoisseeurs then the hidden geniouses of our time and they can’t stop crowing
Well, there’s a lot of gibberish there and I’ve only lightly edited it! This second exercise looks a lot messier than the first even though it’s typewritten. I can understand my typing better than my handwriting but my brain has to do a lot of unconscious correcting to make sense of what I have written.
If you found the second exercise incomprehensible, here is a summary of what I wrote in the second exercise:
I’m typing for this freewriting session because I wanted to examine my bias to handwriting as a more natural connection to my brain and thoughts.
I switched to not looking at my screen while I was typing because I found myself self correcting a lot so if I don’t look at the screen I can’t tell if I am making mistakes so I just have to go with the flow and type as fast as possible to get past my inner editor. Self-correcting slows me down and I’ve never considered that before.
This feels like another kind of connection to my brain, it’s faster for sure. It’s a good thing I’m a touch typist so I don’t have to hunt and peck.
Chicken typing nonsense.
This is actually a pretty decent way to capture the thoughts quickly it feels like a natural connection of thoughts to my unconscious mind. It doesn’t impersonal.
Hole in my ceiling nonsense, a possible portal of entry for small insects?
Comparing my writing to what you’d read in a James Joyce novel, not that I’ve really read one, though I did start one years ago.
Gibberish about my ceiling light.
Thoughts on the trucks I can hear on the highway (which is at least one kilometer from my home) and another in my neighbourhood.
Musing on what’s in the truck on the highway (food, oil, drugs), barreling towards its destination.
Whining about when I get to stop because I don’t know if my timer will actually tell me and interrupt my writing.
Watching a crow on the roof of the house across the street. When a crow’s head move it moves in sudden jerks, like many other birds.
I see a small spider in the window, I wonder if the crow can see it.
Crow caws, another in the neighbourhood answers. What are they talking about?
If a crow was smart, would it tell another crow that it sees food?
When a crow caws its full body jerks like a bellows or bladder - it really puts its whole body into each caw.
Musing on what crows talk about, is their conversation more substantial that human conversation or are they just doing their version of water cooler talk, talking about last night’s crow comedy sketch (do crows have their version of Saturday Night Live?)
Crow connoisseurs are the hidden geniuses of our time and they just can’t stop crowing about it.
Here’s some observations based on my own freewriting experience:
You should feel no obligation whatsoever to share your original freewriting pages with anyone!
If you’re going to freewrite on paper and you want to review and reuse it, double space your writing. That gives you plenty of room to review your results and annotate/clarify them as needed.
Just a suggestion: do your freewriting on cheap paper and or the junkiest notebook possible. By this I mean it might not be the best idea to do a freewriting exercise in your fancy Italian/German/etc. notebook as you might be afraid to mess it up. Freewriting is messy. You don’t want fear of making a mess getting in the way of your freewriting - this is something the internal censor loves to point out.
If you’re going to type during a freewriting sessions, don’t look at the screen, though this might only work if you are a touch typist. This is how I managed to really shut down my internal censor and my instinct to self correct. If you can’t see it, you don’t know that you made a mistake.
If you’re freewriting with the goal to have something to reuse after, give yourself some time to decipher and reflect on what you’ve written.
Also, you can do multiple freewriting sessions but it’s recommended that you take a break between each session. It’s like brainstorming: generating ideas can be hard work.
If the internal censor overpowers you, don’t be discouraged. Freewriting is a skill that you can increase with practice. Give yourself a break and try again later.
Freewriting resources
Peter Elbow, one of the people who helped establish the term freewriting and his books Writing Without Teachers and Writing With Power
Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way (morning pages are longer freewriting exercises which are bounded by the need to fill three pages in handwriting, no matter how long it takes)
Mark Levy’s book, Accidental Genius2 (full of a series of freewriting suggestions and ideas)
Nathalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones, Wild Mind, etc.
This very complete and detailed guide to freewriting.
Coda: I asked the following question on Reddit (r/writing):
and got an interesting answer:
Now to look up associative correction.
Have you tried freewriting before? How did it go? Any tips? Feel free to share your experience in the comments section!
It’s hard to master something without actually doing something, see the research of Dreyfuss and Dreyfuss.
Writing marathons example, where you do multiple back-to-back freewriting exercises about a single topic to help generate deep insights.
I don’t think I’ve ever tried true freewriting before, but now I want to try. Honestly I would go for the typing exercise out of the two; I have horrible handwriting and even with typing errors it would probably end up more legible than handwritten!
I'm reading The Artist's Way right now and I LOVE Natalie Goldberg. My poem today probably should be titled Ode to Goldberg :) Thank you for your honest post Mark, very helpful.