Freewriting is an excellent method when you're writing. It's also a remarkably effective tool for self-reflection, such as looking back over the worries you carry inside. It's a bit like meditation, but the effect is far more immediate and powerful. It's also a great tool to reach for when a project gets stuck.
Freewriting is a writing technique in which you keep writing whatever comes to mind for a set amount of time, without stopping or censoring yourself. It is, quite literally, writing freely. You can think of it as a stream of consciousness. Similar companion methods include morning pages and brain dumps.
Freewriting is a method proposed by Peter Elbow.1 Typically, you keep writing for 10 minutes. Even if you get stuck partway through, you don't stop. For example, you keep writing something like "Ugh, I have nothing to write, what should I write?" Even if it's meaningless babble like this, you keep writing without a break.
There are a few variations. One is to write while keeping a particular topic in mind, which helps when planning a project. Another is to write in a loop. For example, you freewrite for 10 minutes, then look back over what you wrote. Then you pull out the parts that interest you and freewrite for another 10 minutes based on them.
The method I use is to steadily write 10,000 characters in 50 minutes. It's a somewhat challenging amount. 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 this long, the first 2,000 to 3,000 characters only deal with surface-level issues, like how you were feeling today. But once you pass a certain amount, you suddenly find it harder to think of what to write, and at that moment you start to get closer to deeper, inner problems: my own psychological issues, or the place where a project is stuck. After writing a few thousand more characters, I arrive at a reasonably clear way forward, and I feel a bit better. This mood-lifting aspect seems to share its effect with Expressive Writing.
Footnotes
-
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, 10 minutes each (15 to 20 minutes once you're used to it), and not stopping no matter what. If you get stuck, he says it's fine to write "I can't think what to say" over and over. ↩