Freewriting...lalala

I feel that just reading Elbow’s chapter on freewriting gave me a boost of confidence in my writing, more specifically, the writing I will be doing in the future. Knowing that I’m not the only one who sometimes struggles to get thoughts down in formal pieces of writing makes me feel a bit better and more at ease. Of course, there are many, many people who would probably say that they struggle with writing papers and essays, but to read about this “issue” in a textbook by an author who has the same problem sheds a new light – even professionals have the problem of “writer’s block” and so on. It was very interesting and new to me to read about how beneficial freewriting can be. I honestly do not have much experience just writing for the sake of writing. Until this class, I never had a teacher or professor give the class an opportunity to write whatever they wanted to without ever stopping the pencil; it was kind of a new concept to me. I had a class in high school where the teacher gave us a prompt every day that we had to write about, but that was the extent of my creative writing. The prompt would be something like, “If I had a million dollars, I would…” I’ve heard freewriting can be very therapeutic but never tried it myself because I never made time to do so. I have to admit, it was a little awkward freewriting the first time; I could actually just write what I was thinking, and it did make me feel better, and of course, I loved the idea that no one was going to look at what I wrote. I liked Elbow’s idea of writing “I don’t know what to write” or repeating the last word of your last sentence when you don’t know what to write when freewriting; it really does make thoughts and ideas come to mind, and you then feel like you can write pages and pages after that. I never thought that freewriting could actually improve your writing (like when writing formal papers), but I would definitely like to try it and see what happens, like if my thoughts come easier or my sentences are more fluid. I am the kind of person that jumps right into writing a paper without much prewriting. I may jot some ideas down, but that is the extent of it. It may take me 45 minutes to write an introduction because I’m not real sure what I want to talk about yet, but most of the time, an idea just comes to me and I go with it. I am also the kind of person that edits my work as I go along, which I admit that it is rather annoying at times. After I finish a paragraph, I read over it what seems like a thousand times, and just rip it apart until I am satisfied, which I don’t think I am ever really completely satisfied. Elbow’s idea of writing an essay almost like a freewrite is bizarre to me, but I might like to try it. Also, I think freewriting about your topic or some sort of idea you are thinking of including in your paper is an interesting idea. I think the reason I got away from prewriting is because I hated how teachers would make it a long drawn out process. First there was brainstorming ideas, then there was the web, then the outline, then the notecards, etc. etc. I just wanted to write the paper and get it done! My method has actually brought me much success in my writing, but I’m curious as to how an exercise like freewriting could possibly improve my writing. I liked Elbow’s statement that “meaning is not what you start out with but what you end up with” and that “writing is a way to grow a message, not transmit one; a way to end up thinking something you didn’t start out thinking.” When he puts it like that, it makes perfect sense that you end up with meaning; that’s why you are writing the paper in the first place. Another thing that caught my attention in the reading was Elbow’s process of including freewriting in your formal writing. He discussed breaking down your time in intervals. The first 45 minutes would be freewriting, and then the next 15 minutes would be going back over what you wrote and seeing how things add up and how they’re related. In the second and third hours of writing, you would do the same thing but each freewrite would sort of build off of the last one. Finally, the fourth hour you would edit and try to form a final copy. This process seems grueling, and I don’t think I would want to spend that much time freewriting. I think at times it would make writing the actual essay a bit more complicated, but that’s just me because I may just be stuck in my old ways. I would be willing to try Elbow’s process when I have more time. So to sum all of my ideas up, I think freewriting is a very, very good thing, and I know that I would like to try it in my own classroom some day. Perhaps a student has something on their mind that he or she just has to get out because they cannot mentally function normally. That freewriting might relieve them of their troubles (at least for the time being), and they can get on with their day. So, I think freewriting in that sense is nothing but beneficial and would have a lot of positive outcomes. On the other hand, I’m still unsure about using freewriting in the actual writing process. I would be interested in further exploring that concept.