The kind of writing I’ve taught has always been fact based. Free writing is not easy for me. I wrote for a living, but my work was for very specific needs and goals. I liken free writing to what I’ve always been told about meditation: let your mind go blank, don’t concentrate on anything, think of yourself as floating, just write.
Yeah, sure. How do you do that? Every time I try to meditate, my mind begins racing. I can’t focus on a single thought, nothingness, which, I suppose, is the whole point of meditation. My son meditates, or at least he tells me he does. He says it was hard for him to learn to just let go. Let go of what? I just don’t get it.
Similarly, free writing seems to violate everything I’ve been taught: watch your spelling, grammar, and punctuation, be clear and concise. Remember: you’re getting paid to write this stuff. Google Docs and MSWord have the annoying habit of wanting to finish the word I’m typing. I want to bash the computer with a brick and yell, “No, dammit, that’s NOT the word I want! Leave me alone!” Same thing with SpellCheck. It can be a pain in the butt.
I think I’m willing to give free writing a shot, but I can’t grasp how it’s done. I don’t see the point. Too many years as an editor, I guess. I look for the focus, the topic sentence, and for meditation or free writing there ain’t none. It goes against all that I spent years learning as well as my own personal makeup.
I’ve tried to make this a free writing exercise – I do understand the assignment; it’s the concept that I struggle with – but I can’t help hitting the back space key from time to time.
There was a speaker at an Independent Writers of Chicago meeting years ago who taught creative writing at Columbia College. As a demonstration, she passed out pens and paper and told us to just start writing. “Don’t stop. Don’t take your pen off the paper. Don’t think.” There were people all around me who were feverishly scribbling away; a few others were in the same boat with me. I failed miserably. I’ve told people that the only creative writing I’ve ever done was invoices.
I’ve taken a shot at word mapping and story mapping, but I get bogged down in making sure the diagram is designed properly. I do have a method of my own that has seemed to work well over many years. When I’ve had a big project and don’t know where to start, I’ve begun by listing the points I want / have to hit. It’s a kind of word mapping, I guess, except I don’t write down my points in any kind of diagram. I make a list – a neat, straight-line list – that’s it. Then I pick one of my points to start with and skip around, up and down the list. As I begin writing, I check off the points one by one to make certain I’m covering everything.
I constantly question myself as I’m writing: what comes next? What has to happen before this happens? How much does the reader already know? Is there a logical flow? On and on, question after question till I’m done. I can write to a specific word count and/or grade level, from elementary through post-university, something I learned how to do years ago. It’s a skill, but it’s not particularly creative. How do I know when I’m done? My list is all checked off, and I’ve honed everything down to the required length.
Then I become a different person and read over what I’ve written as another me. I would call it my obsessive-compulsive-disorder form of writing. It’s neat and tidy, and it’s worked for me for years. Flexibility and improvisation are definitely not my strong suits.
But the checks always cleared.
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