Ways into freewriting
How to overcome blocks, generate ideas & build a writing habit - a history of freewriting for academics, business and creative writers.
Hello writing friends, Bec here
I’m back from my holiday and have finally stopped sulking and got back into the swing of real life. While I find it easy to pick up urgent tasks for work, it takes me longer to get back to writing, especially when there’s no deadline or external pressure. To help, I had a rummage round my writing toolbox to find the most accessible tool available: freewriting. It’s a proven strategy to overcome writing blocks, generate ideas and increase creativity.
What is freewriting?
The rules are simple, write continuously by hand for a set period of time or a number of pages, without considering spelling, grammar, or even topic. It lowers the stakes and bypasses internal censorship. Research backs it up, showing that freewriting reduces anxiety that leads to writing blocks, and increases engagement, idea generation and leads to writing fluency.
Writers of all stripes swear by it - an ABC of approaches that works for academic, business and creative writers. Each will have their own take on freewriting, as this brief history shows. Over my writing life I’ve tweaked how it works best for me (I share my approach at the end). Some methods may feel a tad hardcore, like setting your alarm an hour early, but others are a breeze - six minutes you say?
» Read more: Find your slip road
Four approaches to freewriting
1. Towards effortless writing with Dorothea Brande
Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer was the first book I read about the practice of writing. Revisiting it over the years I wonder if she said everything there is to say about writing back in 1934 all in her rather prim school-mistressy voice. She introduces the concept with the instruction to writers to: “rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise. Just as soon as you can – and without talking, without reading the morning’s paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before – begin to write.”
In her training for “effortless writing” she captures the essence of freewriting that others would later develop, and dare I say, brand more effectively.
Brande explored the dual personality of the writer who is both a creative artist and a critical editor. Freewriting allows you to separate these aspects, so you can capture raw, unfiltered thoughts, before the critical faculties are fully awake. She was heavily influenced by Freudian theory and focussed on the unconscious which is “in the ascendant” in the “twilight zone between sleep and full waking state”.
Her advice is to write anything that comes into your head, including: “last night’s dream, if you are able to remember it; the activities of the day before; a conversation, real or imaginary; an examination of conscience. Write any sort of early morning reverie, rapidly and uncritically.”
✍️ Try it now: Set an alarm half an hour before your normal waking time and write continuously for 30 minutes without pausing, editing or rereading.
📚 Read more: Dorothea Brande - Becoming a Writer (1934)
“Throughout your writing life, whenever you are in danger of the spiritual drought that comes to the most facile writer from time to time, put the pencil and paper back on your bedside table, and wake to write in the morning.”
Dorothea Brande
2. Increase confidence and find your voice with academic Peter Elbow
Professor Peter Elbow is a pioneer of freewriting. As an academic he researched the theory, practice and pedagogy of writing, publishing numerous papers and books on the subject, including the seminal text Writing Without Teachers which introduces the concept of freewriting. In it, he argues for a separation of the creative practice from the critical editing process.
His approach to freewriting is to write without stopping for a set period of time, typically 10-minutes. The goal is to write anything that comes to mind, without worrying about grammar, spelling or coherence.
As a professor of English at Amherst College, University of Massachusetts, he saw the pressure that students are placed under when asked to write assignments and sit exams. He encourages informal, low-pressure writing that will develop confidence and fluency. By separating the process of writing from the output (what he calls the product) writers are free to explore ideas and find their authentic voice.
He backs up his first-hand experience with peer-reviewed research and numerous case studies and his website The Democratization of Writing is packed full of handouts and links to articles from his career.
✍️ Try it now: Start with a prompt or a question related to a topic you are interested in. Set a timer for 10 minutes, write continuously without stopping. After the session review what you’ve written to identify any useful ideas or themes.
📚 Read more: Peter Elbow - Writing Without Teachers (1973)
“You don't have to think hard or prepare or be in the mood: without stopping, just write whatever words come out - whether or not you are thinking or in the mood.”
Peter Elbow
3. Morning pages for creative recovery with Julia Cameron
in her bestselling 12-week course, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says that Morning Pages are the bedrock tool of creative recovery. Many famous writers and creatives credit her approach from Oliver Burkeman to Emma Gannon with Elizabeth Gilbert saying without it there would be no Eat, Pray, Love.
Like Brande before her, Cameron advises writers to write on waking but adds a new rule on length. “Put simply,” she wrote, “the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness.”
She offers comfort to writers, reassuring those about to start this practice that there’s no wrong way to do morning pages. “These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing. …Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”
That’s it. Write absolutely anything. Just write three pages, and the next day write three pages more. Show the pages to no one. At the beginning you shouldn’t even read them yourself, though over time as you develop the habit and connect with your creative self, you’ll begin to spot patterns and themes in your writing.
Cameron takes a distinctly ‘New Age’ approach – seeing the pages as a guide to inner wisdom, a way to deal with problems and difficult situations. Her advice is to “go to the pages and ask for guidance”. But she’s no pushover, saying that if you’re too busy to write three pages, you are probably too busy to hear the voice of authentic creative urges.
✍️ Try it now: On waking, write three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness; keep the pen moving and write anything that comes into your head until the pages are complete.
📚 Read more: Julia Cameron - The Artist’s Way (1992)
“I have a daily practice of three longhand pages done first thing on awakening, hence, ‘Morning Pages.’ The pages clear my head and prioritize my day. I think of them as a form of meditation. There is no wrong way to do the pages. You simply keep your hand moving across the page, not pausing.”
Julia Cameron
4. Exploratory writing for everyday magic with Alison Jones
Aimed at business writers, Alison Jones sees freewriting as one of the most powerful and lightweight thinking tools we have at our disposal. Backed up by insights from business leaders, entrepreneurs and thinkers such as Dan Pink, Dorrie Clark and Robert Cialdini she outlines a simple methodology rooted in the world of non-fiction writing.
Jones calls it “exploratory writing” and defines it as writing for ourselves, not for others and writing when we don’t know exactly what it is we want to say. The process of getting it on the page helps us make sense of what we think and from there we can begin to write for others - a key business skill.
The advantages are many, including self-mastery, creativity, focus, and solution-finding. All you need to do is grab a piece of paper and write. Morning is good, but so is evening, or any damn time - the important thing is to minimise distraction when you sit down to write.
Time wise, Jones’s sweet spot is six minutes of writing, based on personal experience and research. She says: “six minutes is about as long as I can keep up a true free writing sprint, by which I mean writing at the speed of thought, without stopping, before my energy - or my hand - drops off.” Jones loves a daily challenge and likes to keep a streak going, but her advice is that while consistency helps with momentum and building a habit, you can use exploratory writing as often or as little as you like.
✍️ Try it now: Grab a scruffy pad of paper and a pen or pencil and set your timer for six minutes. Use a prompt or have a question to explore. Write!
📚 Read more: Alison Jones - Exploratory Writing (2022)
“Applying your bum to the seat and your pencil to the page with nothing more than a vague idea or even just a question in your mind and you’ll never suffer from writer’s block again.”
Alison Jones
Bonus! You can also listen to Jones interview Peter Elbow on her podcast The Extraordinary Business Book Club: Episode 312 - Free-writing with Peter Elbow
How I free write
The writers above have figured out how freewriting works for them and have inspired and supported countless others to follow their approach. How you do it will be personal to you, here’s how it works for me:
First thing in the morning to empty my head - this is a form of emotional regulation and expression close to journaling, clearing my head before I get started on the day.
At the beginning of a writing session - it tricks me into getting going and helps me to overcome the fear and emptiness of blank screen. Freewriting eases me in and helps with planning and I often end up typing up the text I’ve written by hand.
When I get stuck - at any and all stages of the writing process! Closer to brainstorming, I explore possibilities of what to write. Simply switching up what I’m doing unlocks new ideas and approaches.
Do you free write or follow the rules for morning pages, exploratory or effortless writing? Is there an approach, a length of time or number of pages that helps you find your flow, or a special pen or note pad? I’d love to hear if and how it helps you to write.
Keep going, Bec
I free write a lot for similar reasons to you. I feel lighter after I've got all the crap out of my head and onto paper. I also really enjoy writing by hand, always a pencil and an A5 brightly coloured notebook. Interestingly, some of the most raw and powerful memoir writing has flowed from a morning free writing session when I've had a lot of life stuff/admin going on and have put all of that down first. It's funny how getting the to-do list down on paper then frees up space for the other writing. I try to carry a notebook & pencil around with me but Notes on my phone has become a rich library of thoughts and ideas that crop up. Free writing on Ilkley Moor is the best! I guess I try not to put too many rules around how long/how many pages though because that immediately puts thoughts and obstacles in the way, sometimes it's a page, other times it's pages and pages that I then start to weave into an existing draft. It's just free...
Totally agree! And it reminds me I haven’t done real ‘free’ freewriting for ages. I always thought freewriting was a fun waste of time until I did it for real a few years ago. Without it, I wouldn’t have ended up with the memoir I’m now serialising here on Substack. Thank you, Bec.