Free writing: the next blogs explained

One of the free writing exercises* by Nathalie Goldberg is to start with an emotion: I hate, I love, I feel… My blogs are often my free writes, the warm up that gets the words flowing each day, the same way my grandfather used to keep a rusty can next to the garden pump. He would pour rain water from the can into the pump and depress the handle with its terrible creak that attacked the eardrums, but wonderful, clean, cool water would come pouring forth to taste and to splash on hot faces and hands while we dug asparagus or picked strawberries. The next few blogs are these exercises.

*Free writing or timed exercises means you start writing either with a pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and keep going. You don’t edit yourself. You just let yourself say whatever comes to mind, without thinking, if I write this, it will hurt Auntie Maud’s feelings. You can write it, you just don’t let Auntie Maud see it.