Freewrite When All Hope Is Lost

Writing brings immense highs and lows. This is true over the course of a writer’s career and even over the course of a single writing marathon. When you sit and write for two or more hours, there may be times when you feel fantastic and times when you feel completely lost.

This post is for those times when you feel completely down in the dumps.

Stick with it!

Trust the practice even when all seems lost. You can turn to the practice when there is no faith or hope or clarity.

Freewriting is the technique and the practice.

The practice is there even when nothing else is.

Reflect on when you’ve felt alive

Even though you don’t feel it now, you have had the feeling before of being fueled and certain and unstoppable and fiery.

It would be easy to deny that it ever even happened. To simply change your beliefs and conclude that you aren’t up to the challenge.

It’s OK that you don’t feel unstoppable now. It doesn’t have to mean anything negative about you. It doesn’t mean you aren’t still unstoppable.

In fact . . .

Prove it by showing up. By really showing up.

Just see if some part of you is willing to be open to the impossible happening. Open to showing up even if nothing major seems to happen right now.

This is where the trust piece comes in to play. Your opportunity is to put the trust into “trust the process.”

Instead of resting on how you don’t right now feel as on fire as you have before or as you would like to be, rest towards what the future might hold for you.

When you trust the process and write anyway, you create the opportunity for much bigger things to happen.

Freewriting gives you the opportunity to vent and meander without involving any additional complexity. For the moment, you have no expectations of anyone else.

Write to present yourself. To reveal yourself and to bring yourself into the present, leaning towards the future.

The main thing is that you feel into your self in your writing. Who is to say what can happen?

To feel the pulse of your humanity and offer something to this moment that invites yourself into greater depth.

Your own unique depths. They won’t always appear that interesting. But the practice is here for you to engage with regularity so that you can reap the rewards over time.

It’s a practice I believe in.

I sit down and want to write something and let it accrue as I go.

You start out with barely anything.

Feel for the little grains of possibility

Letting it flow, you note the feeling of the parts that light something up. And you continue. Not indulging badness but not grasping onto familiar greatness.

Discovering what you want to say.

Then every so often, recap what you have.

Recap, restate, revisit. Not by stopping and rereading but by feeling back into it.

When I feel burdened, I remind myself that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel or change everything. But incrementally, I can offer some new things that help and entertain people. I have simple goals but they aren’t small goals. To enlighten, to get people to feel things, to share my depths.

To abide as myself in the true vulnerable chaos.

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