Relearning to Write — with Tomatoes by Charlie Martin – Part one.

The most daunting part of writing is certainly the step at the beginning where you have an empty screen or a blank piece of paper, and the feeling “Oh my gods, now what?” In my last outing, I recommended writing without a goal — “freewriting” — as a way to find inspiration for something to write. Along with that, I described both Dorothea Brande’s morning typing and Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” as a practice to help loosen up the fingers, get the juices flowing, and get the inevitable nonsense in your head to quiet the hell down and let you work.

I’m in the throws of re-learning how to write fluently now, and as I result I’m reprising all the tricks I’ve learned over the years that have helped in the past, and that are helping me now. (I’m literally sitting at Sarah’s dining table right now with my iPad — I have gotten an apartment in Wichita but won’t be able to move in until next week. And thank you Sarah and Dan for putting up with me.)

So here’s the first one. It’s called “freewriting”. There are many books that recommend some variant of this — as well as Brande’s Becoming a Writer and Cameron’s The Artist’s Way I mentioned last time, the two I find most valuable are Accidental Genius by Mark Levy and Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow.

The practice of freewriting is simple. Write something. Anything. Anything. Peter Elbow summarizes it nicely:

“THE most effective way I know to improve your writing is to do freewriting exercises regularly. At least three times a week. They are sometimes called “automatic writing,” “babbling,” or “jabbering” exercises. The idea is simply to write for ten minutes (later on, perhaps fifteen or twenty). Don’t stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing. Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing.”— Writing without Teachers by Peter Elbow https://a.co/7p7eGLv

The thing that makes that blank page so difficult for many people — certainly for me — is that nasty little voice in your head that mutters “this is no good” or “don’t you have something important to do?” Or even “how stupid do you have to be to think you could be a writer?” I call that voice the Inner Critic or the Critical Voice or number of other things, none of which are suitable for a family publication. Or even Mad Genius Club.

I do sometimes call it “that bastard.”

There are a number of ways to get that bastard to shut up, but the biggest one is to be mindful of that voice, to notice it, recognize it for what it is — just a thought, of which there are millions — and dismiss it.

This, by the way, is what people are talking about with mindfulness meditation. It’s nothing complicated, you don’t need a guru, you just learn to pay attention.

And right then I stalled, wondering if I should write more about mindfulness or write a separate article about mindfulness — at which point the bastard chimes in with “shouldn’t you direct people to a formal teacher? Are you sure you’re qualified?”

The answer, by the way, is “Of course I’m qualified. I write, I have thoughts, just like everyone else.”

So anyway, the idea of freewriting is simply to write down whatever comes to your mind. Anything. If the bastard is getting in your way, write it down. Answer or not as you like — although I suggest you don’t argue with the bastard, because that’s a ploy to get you off what you mean to write.

Pick whatever is most comfortable as the medium you write in. Right now, I’m typing on a portable keyboard using the Ulysses app, which is my favorite. Of course, if you like Microsoft Word, you can use it. (I don’t because it’s too easy to get thinking about how something should be formatted, and that way lies madness. Or at least distraction.) But if you’re not a fluent typist — which I was until I started typing the phrase “a fluent typist” – then write longhand. That’s what Julia Cameron recommends, and in the nearly thirty years I’ve been doing morning pages, that’s what I’ve done the most.

In fact, maybe the easiest way to start is with a legal pad and a pen. Not a notebook, especially not a fancy notebook, because those are intimidating. The Inner Critic (that bastard) can too easily start asking if what you’re writing is Important. Just a cheap lined pad. A legal pad. A college-ruled spiral notebook. Whatever. (In fact, if it still gets in the way, pick something that seems entirely unsuited for writing Good Stuff. Say, the backs of printed paper.)

All you do is find a little time, and settle down with the intention that you are going to write complete dreck as long as you write continuously for a certain time.

Fifteen, or ten, or even five minutes is a good time for a start. In a minute I’ll talk about extending the time, but for now just pick a short time.

You put pen to paper or hands to keys and you write. Remind yourself at the start that it’s just freewriting. It’s not important, you might throw it away as soon as you’re done. What’s important is to be able to say in a few minutes that you have written.

If you have trouble, start by repeating “I don’t know what to write.” Over and over if you have to. If you’re anything Iike me, the Inner Critic may chime in with some obnoxious remark. That’s okay — write it down. If you think about something you need to do — write it down. A few minutes ago, the inner dialog chimed in to remind me of something I need to order from Amazon. So I wrote it down. This was during my morning pages, which do sometimes accumulate to-dos. To-dos are fine too. ANY WORDS that come to mind are fine as long as you don’t stop.

The other thing about freewriting is that it’s a practice. It gets better the more you do it. Do it once and you get an idea of what it’s like. Do it five times and you will learn things about how you and the practice get along. Do it for a month solid and I think you’ll want to keep doing it.

But then how do you turn this into writing something you want to keep?

Honestly, don’t even think about it until you have gotten rolling a little. It’s enough that you just learn to “listen” to the words in your head and write them down without letting things get in the way.

It might even be that this is all you need. I was in therapy following my divorce and an episode of acute depression, and a whole lot of what I was writing was all the obsessive thoughts that go with depression.

Then I started to talk about what I was writing when I saw my therapist, and you know what? It helped. If you do nothing more with freewriting or morning pages than clear out some of the obsessive ruminations, you will have done a Good Thing.

Do keep your freewriting around, and look back at it later, without judgment. Remember it’s just natter and unimportant. You might be surprised: there may be good stuff in there.