Getting Started: Freewriting
Himilce Novas
The most frightening and yet the most wonderful thing in the world is the white page. Because the moment you choose one word, you've already eliminated hundreds of other words that couldn't go near it. And so when you decide to sit in front of that white page, and just let your stream of consciousness flow and your river of words, and write what you want, I think that's great. I think that's, to me, that's… it's a wonderful beginners' tool.

Peter Elbow
It's the more, the more…the more words you put out, the more you have. When people don't have any words, it's usually because they haven't put out enough. Because they've been too silent. Freewriting, generative writing…by calling it generative writing we're saying to ourselves, I need to produce a lot. I need, I need quantity. Later on I'll push for quality. But for now I need quantity. And I need… And it's generative also in the sense that I, I need my own ideas and I need new ideas. Students often feel like writing is just telling what the teacher wanted or telling what the teacher said in a lecture or telling what's in some other book or article. And some writing does that. But it's pretty sad when people conceive of writing as explaining ideas that don't belong to you. So generative also emphasizes the fact that you are generating this stuff. And it's yours.

Peter Farrelly
I have heard of freewriting and that is what I do. That is how I start every project, every screenplay, every book. I don't map them out as well as some people. You know, I know that I have read many interviews with John Irving where he says he doesn't begin a novel until he knows the final line. And I couldn't begin to understand that. For me, I have a seed of an idea, a very small seed. Or a character, and I start writing that character. And then things take off.

Chitra Divakaruni
Generative writing is very, very helpful in trying, for a student, or for me as a writer, I often use generative writing to figure out what is important. The other thing I do is, I have all my students keep a little notebook, and I call it their writer's notebook. And as they're going through their daily life, whenever they see something that excites them or interests them or perplexes them, anything that raises thought, critical thinking, I ask them to write it down. And at the end of the week, I ask them to go through their writer's notebook, and make a list of possible topics that they would like to address in papers.

John Morgan Wilson
Students in my non-fiction classes at UCLA extension practice freewriting 10 minutes every morning when they first get up. Just sit down and write for 10 minutes, don't do anything else, don't think about it, don't censor yourself, just write whatever comes to your mind. And not even what comes to your mind…really, write whatever goes down on the page. And even if that's…I think this is the stupidest exercise in the world, my apartment's cold and I want another cup of coffee and I hate this…that's good. Let it go down on the page and just write. Because you will start to develop the mechanism more naturally of writing and communicating on the page. And that I think is the essential purpose of freewriting, to get things flowing and get things loose.

Tom Bodett
Well, one thing I used to do to get unstuck, and I don't think this was my idea, I think someone gave this to me, was to, I didn't really have an idea or I had an idea but I didn't have anything to say about it. Is to start writing a letter to somebody, anybody. It could be Richard Nixon, could be my mom. "Dear Mr. President, I saw somebody kick a pigeon today…" And go on from there. And that would get me, cause all of a sudden, here's an audience, I know something about this person, so I'll start writing. And that works a lot, and I've given that to students to do as well. And then when it's all done you take the "Dear So-and-so" off the top and you've got an essay at the end of it. They don't have to know who you wrote it for.

Thomas Fox
I usually ask for what I call a zero draft. This is before the first draft, it's really terrible, and it's disorganized, it doesn't make a point, and the sentences are all bad. Often when I ask a student to do this, say I'm sitting down with you and you're nervous, I know you understand the material and I know that you are a good writer, I say, I dare you, write me a pile of crap. Write me the worst text you can possibly imagine. Write me something so stupid, that you're totally embarrassed of it. And the truth is, most students can't even do that. What comes out next is usually a pretty good draft.