Certainly.
Yep. Yep, you can freewrite a whole book.
So there’s the answer.
But maybe you were hoping for something along the lines of “how can I freewrite my book?” or “can you show me what freewriting a book might look like?”
To which I answer:
Certainly.
Yep. Yep, I can show you that.
Sorry. There’s just a bit of a quiet cowboy vibe in the air here where I am today. So I’m rolling with that.
How I Use Freewriting to Draft Entire Novels
In overview, the approach I recommend is to:
- start with a sketch
- revise the sketch into an outline
- build on that in 20 minute bursts
A few dozen bursts later, you’ve got yerself a novel, pardner.
Writing this way is easier than trying to write then stop and think of where you want to go next.
Alternative Approach for the Truly Mad
One other way I would recommend using freewriting to draft a whole book would be to do a writing marathon and tackle the project head-on, maybe even in a single day.
It can be grueling. It’s not for the faint of heart, especially if you don’t have experience writing books or know what you’re going to write.
It is still totally possible. It’s just going to be maddening. Speaking from personal experience.
I say “maddening,” but really it is remarkably rewarding at the same time. It’s maddening in the sense that a book is a long and large and complex thing, so to sit down with no concept of what you intend to write and then to hold yourself to that singular morass of a project for hours at a time (with short breaks every couple of hours) is pretty wild.
As you’d imagine, after you make it through to the end with that beast, you’ll definitely be taking out your heavy-duty revision gloves.
I’ll leave you with an interesting discovery on that note: Quickly-written books can be far easier to revise than those that were put together gradually in halts and starts over the course of years.
So… take heart.
Write fast.
Revise hard.