Thread: Freewriting?

I don't know if any of you freewrite, but I've recently taken up the habit and thank it for helping preserve my sanity and grant me more insight into myself. The writing might not be pretty--it is unedited, and the very nature of freewriting means you type EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING that pops into your head (stream of consciousness, per say)--but it sure is a nice way to find some release.

For those of you who do freewrite, I thought this could be a place where we post our daily ruminations. Mods, please move this thread if it is in the wrong place.

*****

Freewriting
December 24, 2011

There is a story within everyone. It holds their experiences and emotions and the things that happened to them that they are too scared to tell anyone else. It is a place that they do not like to visit often, yet that they visit every night. A place of dark things, mostly, but some bright things too. And to go down to that place consciously, to meet head on the enemies lurking there that want only to cause harm—that is something. To face these things, not only to face them but to defeat them, that is something grand. Something necessary.

But facing these things is not easy. Most people are too frightened to face them. They hide behind religion and sex and video games. They watch television. They drink beer. They smoke a cigarette. They do anything to delay the inevitable.

Because they do these things, when the meeting does come the things in the dark have grown so much that defeating them is out of the question. The things in the dark have warped into depression, and they grow within the soul’s darkness; undisturbed, they fester. The night’s watchman knows it is there yet refuses to act, and soon the depression is unstoppable. It swallows whole and mercilessly and without asking questions. Nothing can sate its appetite. It eats until it can eat no more, until there is nothing left to be eaten. All light is consumed, all hope shattered. The depression feeds on doubt, fear, insecurity, anxiety, boredom, even. Desire is its enemy, desire and love and anything that entails striving. Anything that entails a vision for a better future.

Defeat, renouncement, hopelessness—those are its allies, those are our enemies. Yet too many of us give into this cynicism and hold that this is all there is to the world when there is so much more if we would only open our eyes and see it or hold out our hand and grasp for it.

But facing these things is not easy. Most people are too frightened to face them. They hide behind religion and sex and video games. They watch television. They drink beer. They smoke a cigarette. They do anything to delay the inevitable.

Inevitable...what's inevitable?


I thought Facebook was the place for this kind of thing. Why would anyone want to read something that has just dribbled on to the table, with a deliberate intent not to revise it and make it communicable.

It sounds like an excuse for not bothering.

Jeeez, Querty, you've done it again. You definitely take the gong for the most times someone has completely missed the boat. Even if you didn't know beforehand what freewriting is - which I can well believe - Helicio spelled it out anyway. Freewritng is not supposed to make sense. Jeeez.

My doctor says I should walk for the exercise alone, but putting one foot after another without having somewhere to go is difficult. My mind rebels at the idea of expending energy uselessly. So I walk to the other end of town, about three-quarters of a mile,to buy a kind of pasta that no one else in town sells. In that walk there is destination, purpose, and, as an added benefit, the good that comes from exercise. There are friends who live on that side of town, and other reasons for spending the time and energy to put one foot after another.

Likewise writing needs a destination, a purpose. There needs to be a reason for spending the time and mental energy to put one word after another. The tools of the writer are not sharpened by mindless drivel. No craft can be learned without the discipline imposed by having a goal, a reason for being.

Edit - If it makes no sense, then what's the sense of doing it? For the record, I, for one, understand perfectly well what freewriting is and have read about its supposed benefits. Those 'benefits' appear to be elusive. Writing to purpose demands discipline, not the aimless splattering of words.

Can't argue with that. Maybe I should report my earlier post, on the grounds of jabberwocky.

Jabberwocky makes perfect sense, if one takes the time and trouble to understand it.

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

Jeeez, Querty, you've done it again. You definitely take the gong for the most times someone has completely missed the boat. Even if you didn't know beforehand what freewriting is - which I can well believe - Helicio spelled it out anyway. Freewritng is not supposed to make sense. Jeeez.

You're right, I didn't understand it wasn't meant to make sense. So... if it's not supposed to make sense why dedicate a place to post it? Why offer something to be read that doesn't make sense.

It's verbal masturbation, the only person it makes sense to, is the w#nker.

Originally Posted by qwertyman

So... if it's not supposed to make sense why dedicate a place to post it? Why offer something to be read that doesn't make sense.

Maybe so people who don't like to read it can, and then have something to complain about...

I can see the point in doing it, it is revelatory, things will come out unexpectedly and then you can subject them to discipline and make decent writing of them, I am not sure about the point of sharing it, or even if I would want to share my raw thoughts.

Originally Posted by shadowwalker

Maybe so people who don't like to read it can, and then have something to complain about...

In that case I'm all for it.

Will someone write some more nonsense, someone who knows how to write absolute drivel,(pokes Ox in ribs with sharpened quill).

I do it in my notebooks; don't particularly want others to read it but don't really mind if they do.

Originally Posted by qwertyman

In that case I'm all for it.

Will someone write some more nonsense, someone who knows how to write absolute drivel, (pokes Ox in ribs with sharpened quill).

This was panned by a critic as impossible to comprehend:

“The two men entered Rubenstein’s office.
‘I told you I liked the synopsis, Dram. It had best-seller stamped all over it. I couldn’t call you last night, I was doing other stuff. But I think we need to move quickly with this. These innovative ways you’ve linked ideas together, they’re going to take the book world by storm.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Dram, I’m in the business of picking winners. Have you got that other copy there, so I can refresh my memory?
‘Thanks.
‘Like I said, I’m in the business of picking winners, and this is a winner. It has all the ingredients. Just look at what you’ve packed in to this. An elusive wild animal. The doofus, the animal hunter with the big hat and the low IQ. His blonde Russian girl friend with the large mammaries and the morals of an alley cat. Her nymphomaniac daughter, sniffing around the hunter all hours of the day and night.
‘Mr Fong the investor, putting up those millions for a reward, expecting to make big bucks from cloning the animal after it’s been captured in the wilds of Hoompsteemer Island. The Russian sneaking into Fong’s room at the Hajibib Hilton, intent on persuading him to double the reward. Fong asking her if she has a girl friend. The Russian saying she has a daughter. Fong saying well get her over here then and let’s see what the two of you can do, and maybe we have a deal.
‘The deal consequently being done.
‘Slippery Sam the used-car man, off-loading a burnt-out off-roader onto the doofus. A beach bum, recently migrated from Sausalito and hanging out a boat-builder’s shingle, convincing the doofus he needs to transport the creature back to the mainland by boat to avoid stress, and extracting an order for a triple-hulled SeaCat.
‘Just one thing here, Dram; you might like to consider writing a page or two explaining how a boat builder and a doofus meet up in the first place. Maybe something like they get jammed together in a doorway, leaving a cat house, and…okay, you’ll figure it out.
‘And then the climax, where after violent confrontations with the locals who didn’t want their pristine wilderness disturbed by a hunt for an elusive and possibly mythical creature, but where the Russian kept them entertained while the doofus went about his hunting, and where he eventually succeeded in trapping one of these rare animals and loading it onto his boat, and then where the Russian and the doofus re-united to sail away, and where on the high seas the Navy thought the doofus was a people-smuggler and called on him to heave-to, and the doofus thought they were pirates and kept right on trucking, and the Navy fired on him, and then we find the nympho in the captain’s cabin, and…’
‘You’re a cunning b*****d Dram, I’ll give you that, leaving us up in the air about the ending. It could be a catastrophe, with the SeaCat going down with all hands, or it could be a simple dénouement, where everyone lives happily ever after. Give us enough to make us curious, and then we have to commission the work to find out what happens.
‘Would a fifteen thousand advance seem okay to you?’”

If I may take careful aim and fire at this thread with my two cent bullet, I like the idea of freewriting.
Writers are nearly always grasping for ideas, jotting down hasty notes to remember everything from a ertain word to entire story frameworks, so why not let your ideas out, then sift through them for inspiration? It's kind of the opposite of what one might consider normal, but then again it's like waking up from a dream and realizing that your brain just accidentally gave you a good idea for a story. Additionally, it might just give someone else the inspiration or idea for a story, if not a different perspective on brainstorming.

Berating someone for doing exactly what they said they were going to do makes very little sense, especially when it makes less sense than the result of what they complained about in the first place. I can't practice freewriting in this forum since many of the thoughts I have are not publically acceptable, but if it suits you, go for it. If someone who lacks the imagination to come up with a username not consisting of a line of keys on a standard keyboard gives you grief, take it for what it's worth. To clarify, it's worth nothing so it can be ignored with no consequence.

Seemed pretty straightforward to me. In fact, if I remember rightly, I was there at the time.

I do it in my notebooks

What goes into my notebooks is usually very abbreviated, if I don't write it up for a bit I quite often find myself looking at it thinking "Now, what was that all about?"

What goes into my notebooks is usually very abbreviated, if I don't write it up for a bit I quite often find myself looking at it thinking "Now, what was that all about?"

Which begs the question (apologies to ppsage), whatever is to become of that shedful – shedful? – well, it’s teaspoonful so why not shedful? – of notebooks?