Once upon a time, the blank page in a composition book scared me. But probably not in the way you might think it scares most kids. Most see a blank page and feel trepidation at filling it, a self-fulfilling prophecy that what they write won’t be good enough. My fear? That what I wrote wouldn’t be concise enough. When you only have a few pieces of paper, writing too much means less paper available for the next project. My fear had an easy fix. Switch to loose-leaf paper in a folder. Crumple what didn’t work, keep what did. In this blog entry, you will revisit freewriting (or get introduced), as well as access a web-based image inspired writing tool. And, as a bonus, you can get a copy you can run on your computer via your browser.
My colleague Diana Benner picked up a copy of Peter Elbow’s Writing with Power, along with a few other texts. I immediately swiped the copy to read. I had never read Elbow’s work, and couldn’t wait to fill my notebook with a reverse outline of his writing.
Writing Challenges the Uninitiated
You’ve seen the wide eyes, the still pencils. I saw it teaching fifth and sixth grade writing workshops. “I don’t know what to write,” Pauline would say at the start of the week. That’s why watching her fifth grade self write more and more into a smiling crescendo of excitement made teaching writing fun for me. Writing, you see, challenges the uninitiated. Those who write often know that your first words are always imperfect. In them lies the seed for improvement, the second draft.
Some think that their first words must be perfect the first time. Peter Elbow suggests that approach may be wrong. His book, Writing With Power, offers a way out: freewriting. The instructions are simple: Write. Don’t stop until the buzzer sounds.
“If you’re freewriting well, you’ll concentrate so hard on truth telling and write so fast you’ll put yourself in a kind of trance, like that state between waking and sleep…when a gaggle of good ideas or memories come together for you.”
What is Freewriting?
It’s simple. Set a timer. It can be for five, ten or fifteen minutes (I stop at twenty minutes). During that time, you write. Keep writing without pause. Ignore the Editor in your head that screams at you to fix your spelling and/or grammar. Avoid re-reading what you wrote moments before, keep going. If you get stuck, write “stuck stuck stuck” or repeat the last word. Keep the pen moving. The goal isn’t a good final piece but writing to get the words, any words, out.
Elbow called the messy stuff “garbage.” Let the garbage out. Good ideas, like forgotten belongings, hide in the garbage bin sometimes.
As a blogger with his own space, I often “let the garbage out.” I call it “junk blogging,” where you dump what you want to say like a dump truck pulling up to a landfill.
Why Does Freewriting Work?
Freewriting, when I first learned about it, seemed wrong. Why would anyone NOT try to write the most perfect version they could from the get-go? Even today, I can’t write anything longer than a paragraph without keeping a revision list tucked away in my mind. When the list gets too long, I quickly make revisions, then continue writing.
Some of the reasons why Elbow says freewriting works include:
- Ends the Blank Page: You start writing. That’s the first step. This is a big deal for new writers. Do it enough times, it’s like jumping in a cold swimming pool. You know that it’s only the first plunge that offers pain. You learn to embrace it in time because the best is yet to come.
- Silences the Editor: It separates writing from fixing. Ideas flow better. One way I overcome the editor? I don’t worry about edits right away. Either that, or you get accustomed to putting every stone in place the first time. The real challenge is the temptation to revise.
- Builds Speed: Putting words down fast gets easier with time. But the key is to put words down, even if you start slow. In time, you get faster. This seems contradictory to me but I remember the old gunslinger’s advice. “Know where you put your bullets and take your time. Even if the other guy draws and shoots fast, chances are he will miss.” A mis-spent youth of reading Louis L’Amour and Max Brand gave me that bit of wisdom. But Elbow isn’t wrong here.
- Finds Ideas: Surprising thoughts appear when you don’t filter. The act of making a sentence means you are constrained by the structure of the words flowing out. Whether you want to or not, you must commit to the words that come after the ones you put down already. This means you stumble on ideas you didn’t imagine, your brain doing its best to connect what you are going to say to what you’ve said.
- Lowers Fear: It’s practice, not performance. Less pressure. This evaporates in time, like a puddle on a sunny day. The fear is a byproduct, no more and no less. Use it or ignore it.
- Uncovers Your Voice: Your real sound comes through without the edits.Finding your voice can be tough. When you do, the breakthrough can give you a warm glow of triumph.
When the time is up, there’s a lingering sense of, “I need a few moments more.” That search for the moments are like off-ramps to the highway, a moment of transition where you long for the feeling of the flow. Like me, my students resisted at first. “This is weird,” they’d groan. Then the timer would ring. They’d look surprised. In a short span, they had written, passed into what Macrorie describes as a “trance” state. In time, they set aside their judgment of what filled their pages. Those pieces of paper went into a folder for safekeeping. For now, simple relief at getting the work done sufficed. Freewriting detours around the roadblocks our mind throws up:
- Spell things the right way
- Punctuate appropriately
- Enforce subject verb agreement
Let’s take a look at one way to approach “being in the flow.” If you’ve written anything, gotten into the flow, you know that feeling of euphoric excitement. The same one my student, Pauline, would get. Or Ronnie when he wrote about going skateboarding with friends.
The FLOW Method: How To Do It
Use FLOW:
- F (Fast) & Timed: Pick a time. 5, 10, 15 minutes. Start the clock. Write fast but steady.
- L (Loose): Let go. No editing. No correcting. Repeat words if stuck.
- O (Open): Write what comes. Good, bad, strange. All of it.
- W (Write): Keep hands moving. Write until the timer stops.
That’s all. Keep it private if you want. Or read it later. Look for sparks, or the seeds to your next piece.
Focused Writing and Quick Sprints
Focused freewriting is another approach that keeps you on target. A similar approach is quick bursts. Let’s take a look at a technology you can mimic on your own in your classroom or use on your own. Of course, you could arrange images in a slide deck, too. But there’s something to be said for opening an image.
Introducing Hectalex for Quick Bursts
I ran across Hectalex, a website that challenges you to write 100 words from a picture prompt. As a bilingual/ESL teacher, having students use pictures as starting points for writing isn’t new. Think of this type of writing as a sprint, a way to encourage students to freewrite, fast. For under thirteen year olds, you may want to assign pseudonyms, or use the local version of the solution provided at the end of this blog entry. Or hold up a picture and ask students to write.
Getting Started
It’s easy. Say to them, “You have five minutes. Go. Write.” The goal here is to build confidence. This kind of writing has always come in handy for me, certainly writing on tests. Make up a story that connect to the content, using the story as a creative non-fiction hook.
Hectalex Example
You can find a variety of image prompts at Hectalex, which offers one up each day. The stories archive offers a variety of efforts by others.
My Freewrite Example
As a writing teacher, I often wrote with my students. As a touch typist, I can write, edit, revise going backwards and forwards. But when I write by hand, I sense my brain putting ideas together, one word at a time. I don’t look at the Composer in my mind, at least, not too closely. Instead, I let the Composer do its thing. A focused freewrite or quick burst about the birds in a tree…but rather than rely on Hectalex, let me pull one from memory, as interpreted by ChatGPT’s image generation:
A transcription of my freewriting effort:
Hot summer rain falls as I step outside the hotel room. My parents doze, the jet lag weighing their bodies down. For me, the smells of a home not seen in a decade pulls me into the jungle. The wet green foliage swallows me up, all my worries and concerns. This was our last outing together, this trip to my homeland, my later self interjects. That’s when I spot them, three toucans in a tree, their wings clipped, enduring the summer rain like me, longing for some other time where Mom, Dad, and I could be free.
Reflection: I can easily see how I might expand this into a longer piece. I’m not sure why I gravitated towards the image of the toucans, a long lost memory. I see now it taps into longing for a time when my parents still lived. Three has always been a special number for me, since it represented my parents and me. But those three toucans long dead also represent the family I grew up with, the place I once knew.
Go ahead. Give freewriting a try yourself. And, if you want to read more of Peter Elbow, check his articles online.
Bonus: Picture-Prompt Freewriting Tool You Can Run Anywhere
Is Hectalex unavailable in your school or district? Why don’t you try the Picture-Prompt Freewriting Tool? Using Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (Experimental) to generate the code for three files, it was easy to customize the images. Follow the simple instructions in this add-on blog entry (which Gemini AI wrote to clarify the process) below the screenshot of the tool.
