The magic of free writing

The magic of free writing

Natalie Goldberg is a firm a believer in free writing. So is Julia Cameron. You’ve probably heard of them. Natalie Goldberg is the author of Writing Down the Bones, a book that I first read back in the 1990s and that changed my writing life forever. Natalie is an advocate of simply ‘meeting at the page’, at sitting down in a café with a coffee, a cookie, notebook and pen and simply ‘going’. “Put your pen on the paper and just go,” she writes. Write about anything. About what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel or simply imagine. 

Julia Cameron is the inventor of what she calls Morning Pages, a writing tool she explores and advocates in her book The Artist’s Way. Julia Cameron believes that all you have to do is sit down and write for ten minutes a day without stopping. Ten minutes longhand, preferably first thing in the morning, which is when you have just emerged from sleep and dreams are still floating about in your head. I bought this book at the same time I bought Goldberg’s and devoured that too.

Once I discovered Goldberg and Cameron and their morning pages, speedwriting (also known as stream of consciousness writing or free writing) it changed who I was as a writer. I moved from writing articles for fee-paying publications and books for mainstream publishers for a living and started running writing circles based, simply, on this kind of writing.

This was the 1990s and pre-internet. I advertised my first circle by pinning notices on supermarket noticeboards. The circles were free of charge. I ran them from my own sitting room and I provided refreshments. I ran them for fun. I ran them for me. I ran them because I love writing for myself but I also love encouraging others to share my passion too and maybe discover they have a poet or a novelist, a dramatist or memoirist hidden inside themselves. These circles were a place for new writers to find themselves, grow in confidence, make friends who shared their love of words. It was also a place for established writers, like me, to grow and share. Perhaps best of all this was where I found people like me who could become my friends.

Just ten minutes

Inspired by Goldberg and Cameron, my free writing sessions always begin with someone suggesting a random topic. The randomness is key. That no one has a chance to think in advance is important. Stream of consciousness writing needs to emerge unbidden from the subconscious. This is part of the magic of speedwriting. Just ten minutes. Write whatever comes into your head. It’s fine to hop about and skip from one topic to another, to go down a rabbit hole as you follow one train of thought and then explore another. It’s fine to start the exercise writing about the ‘floordrobe’ of discarded clothes on your bedroom floor, then flit to a memory of how your teenage brother’s room always smelled a particular way and onto thought of how hard it is to describe a scent without lapsing into cliché and then how it reminds you of the job of a sommelier, which almost sounds like ‘smellier’. And so on.

Ten minutes is the magic amount of time, Cameron believes, because, it is only by writing, longhand for this length of time that ‘the magic happens’. And indeed, the magic does happen, somehow. For around the seven or eight minute mark you relax and find the courage to explore a truth you are often loath to think about. About, maybe, how you once fell in love with the Swedish sommelier at Le Gavroche restaurant in London and how he broke your heart. About seven or eight minutes is when time starts to fly. Your start to have insights and inspiration, epiphanies and powerful self-reflection. But it must be ten minutes and it must be longhand.

Longhand please

“But I can type faster!” my students say. And I agree. Me too. And typing is less tough on the lazy old fingers than holding a pen. But the point of free writing is that you must not reread what you wrote. You must not cross out. You must not edit your work as you go, because when you do that it breaks that stream of consciousness that seems to flow from the wellspring of your heart, your gut, your soul, and race past unbidden rocks of memory, tickling smooth round pebbles of deep emotion as it hurtles to the nib of your pen and onto the page with such force that, on re-reading later, you can hardly believe you wrote those words!

Just ten minutes. No less.

When you use the computer you will be tempted (don’t try and tell me you won’t) to edit as you go. You watch the words appear and when you misstype you go back and correct. If you insist on using a computer then I urge you to cover up the screen and simply look at the keys. Your experience will be better for it.

Ten minutes a day

Becoming a Writer, was written by Dorothea Brande in 1934. That is almost 100 years ago. I bought a dog-eared secondhand copy off the Internet at a time when I was suffering a severe and lasting writers’ block. This was a time when I read everything I possibly could to shake myself out of my lethargy. Brande was also a firm believer in the power of ten minutes daily. She told me a little too firmly, I thought, that if I honestly thought I was a writer then surely I could manage to sit down and free write for ten minutes a day and that if I couldn’t then I wasn’t a writer. Simple as that. That stung. But I was a writer. I was, I was. So I began to write again.

My father was a writer too. He wrote 31 books; a number I was determined to beat and so, yes, I have reached 32 now, and counting. When I asked him how to be a writer, he told me exactly what my first step should be.

“First, park bum on seat!” he said. 

He was six years old when Brande’s book was published. They both had a point. All it takes is ten minutes a day, sitting down, with pen and paper. 

Write to understand

Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, wrote:

“We write not to be understood but to understand.”

And that’s another part of the magic of free writing. Sometimes, when faced with a problem, I wrestle with it in my mind, usually around three in the morning. I go for a walk while I ponder some more and I talk to friends about my issue. Often I end up even more confused, which is when I remember the power of free writing. I ‘park bum on seat’, pick up pen and paper and ‘just go’. 

I really can’t think what to do about X, I begin. Maybe I could do Y, but then… I continue. Or I could do Z… and usually, and all it takes is ten minutes, I’ll write my way to the perfect solution.

There is a reason why coaches and psychotherapists get you to write things down. Talking about something is one thing but writing it down takes your understanding to another level.

Sharing your free writing

My writing classes always including writing exercises, reading work aloud and group feedback.

Whenever I get my students to start free writing, they have insights. When they read their work to the group they often begin with, “This is a load of rubbish but here you go…” It’s never rubbish, believe me. Often their reading ends to a round of applause as the other students are blown away by the wisdom, insight and even vulnerability of their words. While the writer may consider their writing to be humdrum, listeners notice the beauty of a phrase, the poetry, the descriptions, the natural dialogue, the flow and lyricism of the prose. Everyone is invited to give feedback. Positive feedback. Even the best writers suffer from imposter syndrome (in fact, I believe that if they don’t feel like a fraud then they probably won’t be very good writers!). Feedback from me, the teacher, is always welcomed, but when the other students are wowed by the words of others, slowly, over time, that fragile ego begins to feel a bit stronger and believe that maybe, just maybe they may be okay at this writing lark.

Prompt, write, share, feedback

That’s how my Speedwrite Live sessions go. Someone comes up with the prompt. No one knows who will be asked to give the prompt so no one prepares. Once we had concrete, another a pot of pens. Random is good. We all write. Me too. I set a timer for ten minutes and we write whatever comes into our heads. Then, the person who picked the topics goes first and reads their writing. The rest of us listen, jot down a few of the most memorable phrases and then we add our comments to the mix. Like a miracle, everyone always finds something insightful or beautifully written in the words, however ‘rubbish’ and I lean back in my chair, puffed up with pride, as I watch my students start to find their writers’ voice, recognise their strengths and bask in the glow of knowing that something they wrote touched someone.

That’s all we do in Speedwrite Live, the stream of consciousness writing sessions I run every month via Zoom. Free of charge.

Speedwrite to believe in yourself

When folk are new to one of my Writers’ Circles or Speedwrite Live classes they can be embarrassed to find themselves in a room full of strangers, to speedwrite for the first time and then be expected to share their work.

The good news is that I never force anyone to share if they really don’t want to. But I know that behind any apology that is used to preface what they are about to read is all too often someone desperate to find out if they are any good. Keen to have the spotlight for a few moments. Excited to discover whether anything they said might have inspired someone else. 

“Oh, it’s not very good, but it’s the best I can do. I got in a right muddle to start with, had no idea about the topic. It’s crap. Aaagh. This is awful,” they garble while chewing at their pen cap.

“We don’t need the preamble!” I interject, my voice deliberately light. “It’s okay. You’re among friends. Just start.” And they do. And it is okay. 

They finish reading and look up, their faces filled with concern. But every single other person in the group knows how it feels to be the newcomer. They felt the agony of the Firstimer’s Preamble too. They know they will find plenty to compliment in the piece. They always do. I begin the feedback, highlighting the fine phrases, the tone, the sentence length, the style. I pride myself on my honesty and tell them I’m known as Honest Jo, so they have to believe me. Not that they do. Deep down they still think I’m ‘just being nice’. But then the others chip in with their thoughts, discussion ensues and our newbie speedwrite liver has to stifle a grin. Writers, if you remember feel like frauds, so being overtly delighted by praise is not something they want to do. But we can see it. We bask in their happiness that a) they just did a firewalk and b) they made it through and we are all richer for it.

After a few sessions they cut the apologetic preamble and just launch right in. They know the writing and the sharing and the feedback will always uplift their spirits. They know that joining Speedwrite Live or an Open Writers’ Circle has made them a better, more confident writer.

Speedwrite Live to find your voice

Perhaps one of the most exciting benefits of joining and Open Writers’ Circle or Speedwrite Live is that after a time, among people who know your writing, as you grow in confidence, it starts to become clear to everyone when you are in flow. As a teacher with published experience as a poet, memoirist, novelist, journalist, blogger, columnist and non-fiction author, after about ten sessions is becomes clear to me that one writer is a natural poet, another a natural memoirist, another a born features writer.

As a writer grows in confidence they get braver, dare to try new styles and tackle new subjects and there are times when we all feel the hairs stand up on the back of our necks, or a twist in our guts as a universal truth is exposed and expressed in a glorious way. As a community we delight in the success of others and encourage each other to go for it, to turn that seemingly random piece of stream of consciousness into a short story, or a haiku, or enter a competition, or to write that as a piece for a local magazine.

It can take years of solitary free writing to finally find and feel comfortable with your natural writers’ voice, using the style and tone at which you excel and which, usually, you find easiest to do. But, when you join a community like these, you will get there sooner, buoyed by a group of cheerleaders who along the way became your soulmates and friends.

So, how do you join?

Speedwrite Live is free of charge and takes place on the Third Thursday of the month at 4pm UK time. It tends to last for about an hour. There is no commitment, no prework and no need to dress up. Just bring a pen and paper. My 85-year-old mother has no writing ambitions but loves the camaraderie and fun of it. Age and gender are no barrier. Neither is lack of experience. We welcome people who do not have English as a first language and currently have regulars from the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada as well as the UK. 

Just register once and you can use the same Zoom link each time. 

The Open Writers’ Circle takes place on the First Thursday of the month at 10am UK time. It lasts for two hours. We start with a Speedwrite exercise and then I teach an aspect of writing. It may be poetry, or fiction, or life writing. Perhaps we practise characterisation or description, rhythm or writing a review of a new book. The idea is that through the classes you all grow as writers and explore your own talent and voice.  There is no commitment and no preparation or homework. It’s informal and costs just £25 a time. To join you need to sign up and pay for each class separately through my Events calendar.

Free writing is magic. Free writing with others can be miraculous. Do join us.