Writing is actually not always a fluent and consistent process. Being an artistic profession, it requires devotion, talent and also something more abstract – the thing that is called inspiration, or poetically, the muse. All authors without exception know the pain of writing under lack of inspiration. In such condition putting down every line is more like struggling, and if that’s not painstaking enough, the author will probably dislike the result in the end and send the entire page to trash. Dealing with such creativity blocks is never easy, but luckily there are some known techniques to overcome this problem.
Free writing is the method of fast-paced timed writing, when the author puts down anything that comes to his mind without concerning about grammar, semantics or structure. It is more effective if a short time limit is set for writing, like 10 and 15 minutes. To get a better idea about free writing, do not confuse it with making drafts or brainstorming. Free writing can serve as an outlet for the stream of thoughts that can’t line up into sensible text. Due to the nature of free writing, it never involves time-consuming thought process, while thoughts are still allowed to pour on paper ‘unprocessed’.
How to decide when free writing can be of use? Well, if you’ve been working on your essay or book for a few hours, and then found out that your progress was measured in just several lines, it is definitely a sign of mind block, and a good time to take a chance with free writing. With all simplicity of free writing, authors unfamiliar with this technique will need some practice before they will be able to switch into free writing mode whenever needed. First of all, forget usual sentence structure and don’t care much about punctuation. Your task is removing as many barriers as possible between your unforced thoughts and the paper. If you come to realize that there is nothing to write again, go ahead and write this exact statement, expressing your feelings and comparing the situation to something else. That’s the point. You overcome the block by letting your thoughts to the outside, abstracting yourself from the topic of your current essay. Another hint for free writing is not to read what you’ve written in the middle of it. Don’t let your hand rest until time limit is reached. After you’ve finished, it is time to look through the writing and highlight everything of interest.
