What Is Freewriting And How To Do It
By: Kenzie Kuo
Tags: Writer, Write, Writing, Freewriting, Writers Block

Each day, the average person has about 50,000 thoughts. Some researchers peg that number at 70,000 thoughts per day. It’s hardly surprising that with this amount of inner traffic we risk losing touch with our self.

This is especially true for anybody in the creative space. If a portion of your work relies on you generating an endless supply of ideas, your creative muscle is flexed and ready to pump out idea after idea, taking in information all the while.

But regardless of whether you’re a more linear or more non-linear thinker, chances are you’ve undoubtedly faced a larger challenge such as writing a book or thesis, or if you have to think about your personal life, or make difficult business decisions.

One highly effective way of tackling these large, seemingly formless challenges is by using a technique called freewriting.

Freewriting is an excellent way to organize your mind and capture your best ideas.

Contrary to what you might be thinking right now, freewriting is NOT directionless and unfocused scribbling. Far from it.

There are specific rules and techniques one needs to use in order to maximize and reap the rewards of your initial thinking.

One way to think about it is that you’re making a super high-quality orange juice.

But in order to do that you need a really amazing machine, one that will capture all the oranges in a single spot and pull them through systematically. But it’s not enough to have that machine — you have to learn to use it properly. Say you failed to read the instructions and forgot a few screws here and there. Maybe you forgot to attach the filter. Either way, you put your oranges through and you get substandard juice riddled with bits of seed and pith.

Freewriting is that amazing machine that, when used properly, will continue to yield amazing idea juice time and time again.

To start freewriting, relax, write quickly, and give yourself a time limit.

First, have a try easy attitude

Always go into something knowing what to expect. Here, you’ll want to set your attitude accordingly by tempering your expectations. The goal here is to get you going with ease. Some of us have a tendency to put high expectations upon ourselves (myself included). Don’t. This will only set yourself up for failure if you set such a high bar there’s no way you’d reach it out the gate, even if you’re a quick study and decent writer.

Instead, relax and give 90% of your effort instead of 110%.

Don’t expect you’ll produce flawless prose right away. Instead, just work on smashing out some okayish words and phrases. You might surprise yourself, but the main point here is to just get something down so at least you know your starting point.

Second, write quickly and don’t stop

The reason for this is that you don’t want to judge yourself too soon. We tend to be critical of ourselves, and we need to be, but being critical whilst you’re in the middle of writing will simply slow you down, not unlike hitting a tar pit in the while you’re going down a waterslide.

You should feel something like this:

Aim for volume here. Don’t worry about the content for now.

Write (or type) quickly and continuously. See if you can continue to write like this without picking up your pen.

If you hit a wall, just keep moving. Repeat the last few words or sentence if necessary. It doesn’t have to be grammatically correct. Got a typo? Run over them like a crazy madperson on a mission.

Third, have a time limit

Having a time limit, or timeboxing, your freewriting session will help ensure you focus on this and nothing else in that time period. You have a definite beginning and end time that is dedicated to freewriting and nothing else. Use a timer for this, or a ‘natural clock’ with a known duration, such as a laundry load.

Short bursts between the 5–20-minute range work well for beginners or if you haven’t written in a while. If you’re doing research for a book, longer freewriting marathons might be appropriate.

You can also break down a marathon into several short sprints, say 20 minutes each. At the end of 20 minutes, you check what you’ve written and note anything that stands out to you. Then dive right into the next session.

Do enough sprints back-to-back and you’ll end up with a marathon.

In short, be this guy: