Freewriting is an outstanding method for writing. It's also an extremely effective tool for self-reflection — for looking back at the worries you carry inside. It's a bit like meditation, but the effects are far more immediate and powerful. It's a great tool to reach for when a project has stalled, too.
Freewriting is a technique where you keep writing whatever comes to mind for a set period of time, without stopping and without self-censorship. It is, literally, writing freely. You can think of it as stream of consciousness. Companion methodologies include morning pages and brain dumps.
Freewriting was proposed by Peter Elbow.1 Typically you write continuously for 10 minutes. Even if you get stuck partway through, you don't stop. You keep writing even if it's just "ugh, I've got nothing to write, what should I write." You keep going, even with meaningless filler like that.
There are a few variations. One is writing while keeping a specific topic in mind. That one helps when you're planning a project. There's also a looped version. For example, you freewrite for 10 minutes, then look back over what you wrote in those 10 minutes. Then you pull out the part that interests you and freewrite for another 10 minutes based on that.
The way I do it is writing 10,000 characters steadily over 50 minutes. It's a somewhat challenging volume, admittedly. So I can't do it every day, and sometimes I scale it down to 5,000 characters in 30 minutes.
When you freewrite for that long, the first 2,000–3,000 characters only cover surface-level issues. How my condition was today, that sort of thing. But once you pass a certain volume, you suddenly struggle to think of things to write, and in that moment you start reaching the issues deeper inside. My psychological problems, or the places where I'm stuck on a project. Write a few thousand characters more like that and you arrive at a reasonably clear way forward, and you feel better. That mood-lifting aspect seems to share its effect with 표현적 글쓰기.
Footnotes
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Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers, Oxford University Press, 1973, Chapter 1, "Freewriting Exercises" (pp. 3–11). He recommends writing at least three times a week for 10 minutes (15–20 once you're used to it), never stopping no matter what. If you get stuck, he says you can write "I can't think what to say" over and over as many times as you need. ↩