first blog 090209

To sum up the first reading, I'd have to say that I wish I would have been exposed to the teachings of Peter Elbow a long time ago. I don't know if anyone has tried any of his freewriting exercises yet, but I have, and I find that it does provide some good results.

For the most part, I think that it acts more as a journal exercise -- a way to simply get random thoughts and ideas out of your head and onto the paper...which seems to be a lot like what we do as bloggers. However, I do question how you can utilize his writing approaches when it comes to writing things like research papers or other forms of academic writing.

I know that he recommends writing for a span of at least 10 minutes each day, so I'd imagine that the idea is to gradually improve your approach to freewriting as you go along. Still, I wonder how well this applies to anything other than journal writing...or something like a diary. I assume that ideas will start to flow more freely during the freewriting process, and that regardless of the writing exercise you are undertaking, these ideas will just naturally start to spring from your head. I guess that's the general idea behind it all.

I used to write for a newspaper before I went back to school, and often times I'd find that I experienced periods when writing became difficult for me. Looking back, I think that a lot of this had to do with pressures that I was placing on myself. I also believe that I had to do with fear of failure. I think that Elbow addresses some of these topics in his text, but it's been a few days since I've read, so I am not exactly sure. Anyway, my point is that I think that freewriting is a good way to begin to unlock the brain during the whole writing process. You don't get a chance to sit and think about what you're going to say or how you're going to say it -- it just sort of spurts out onto the page. I find this exercise to be very refreshing.