Why Free Write????

 

As a writer of 17 books, words always float around in my head. To create the books, I need the discipline of sitting down and pounding away at my beloved laptop.

There are days my fingers can barely keep up with my brain, but on other days, my fingers rest on the keyboard as if paralysed. 

I think of a writing workshop I took in Paris with the amazing Isabel Huggins. An overweight French woman with fireman red hair pushed into a chignon described how she has to wait days sometime for The Word, Le Mot. She didn't write until The Word, Le Mot arrived.

Having worked in PR, marketing and as a reporter with firm deadlines, this was never possible. Likewise, writing around a full time job before doing my own writing, I couldn't wait for an inspired word to come into my head.

About the same time, I found Nathalie Goldberg who extoled the virtues of free writing in her book Writing Down the Bones.

The concept was to sit with paper and pen and just write on a newly selected subject. Don't stop, don't edit. She wanted to banish "the monkey mind" stopping the flow.

It was freeing, I used it whenever I was stuck.

Eventually I found a writer friend, and we would meet at a cafe, find a "victim" and free write about that person between sips of tea. Sometimes we identified the same characteristics while at other times we went on different paths.

My writer friend's work commitments made future free writes impossible, but I would still use the technique when blocked or slowed.

My beloved husband then suggested he and I do free writes together. He is also a writer.

Tuesdays became sacrosanct free write days no matter where we were. We'd find a café, have a croissant and tea (me) hot chocolate (him) and write our hearts out for ten minutes.

At one point we were joined by an Irish friend.

Recently another writer has joined us. 

Sometimes what we produce could be polished into a flash fiction piece or the seed for something bigger: short story, novella, novel. Of course, there wouldn't be time to develop them all and we normally went back to our regular writing, refreshed. 

Note: visit www.dlnelsonwriter.com.