Writing is weird. It’s not like other art forms. And every writer at some point has found it difficult or uninspiring to write. Over the years, I have tried all sorts of writing strategies, exercises and techniques. Sometimes out of frustration, and sometimes out of a desire to embrace all the weird ways that we… Continue reading Freewriting Exercise: Get Things Moving
Tag: flow
What is Depth Freewriting?
Freewriting has been around for some time. Brenda Ueland wrote about it back in 1938 in her book If You Want to Write. Peter Elbow showed how freewriting makes writing accessible to everyone in Writing Without Teachers and other books. Generally speaking, freewriting is simple: You write without stopping. At heart, it is a simple… Continue reading What is Depth Freewriting?
Debunking Writer’s Block: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (Part 1)
The beliefs underlying writer’s block Writer’s block comes in many forms. The most obvious form is the “total stop” kind of writer’s block where even if you wanted to write something, you just can’t. Writer’s block also takes other, more subtle forms. Sometimes it is merely a palpable constriction in your motivation to write. In… Continue reading Debunking Writer’s Block: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (Part 1)
Freewriting Exercise: Get Sensual With Sound
For this exercise, the main constraint is the auditory element. Freewrite for ten or twenty minutes (at least), focused only on the sense of sound. As you write, really get into the feeling of the sound. You might listen to music and write the way a song feels. You might say nothing about the music,… Continue reading Freewriting Exercise: Get Sensual With Sound
Freewriting Exercise: Write Using Hypotaxis / Parataxis
Writers are fortunate to have all sorts of different descriptive tools to label the things we do and how we use language to give shape to our thoughts and feelings. This article introduces a couple of useful distinctions. They sound more complicated than they really are. They sound complicated because they are Greek. They sound… Continue reading Freewriting Exercise: Write Using Hypotaxis / Parataxis