Lydia is the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to me. She’s a great editor. She’s a continuity expert. She’s diligent, unrelenting in her pursuit of excellence and the bane of my existence.If I hadn’t discovered the freewriting process, I would still be scratching and writing word by excruciating word on my first book, my first story even – she’s that good.
Lydia is so good at what she does that when you look up Writer’s Block in Wikipedia, you’ll see her name as one of the authors of the definition.
But, as things are meant to be, I was meant to help this editor rise to her stellar position and freewriting came to me as a way to provide her with fodder to work on. Believe me, in the beginning she was not happy about vacating the premises and letting me write willy-nilly on the page without using her exacting filter.
But now, after years of practice, when it’s time to freewrite, Lydia grabs her bags and exits stage left. She knows that she’ll get a chance at the words later in the day.
Freewriting is simple, easy to do and a forum that is akin to practicing scales like musicians do.
- Pen to page
- Timed writing
- Go.
That’s it. I write as fast as I can (and still be able to read!). I write run on sentences (and then, and then, and then…). Grammar? Forget about it. Lydia can deal with that later and we’re both happier for it.
See what you have to say. You will amaze yourself. You will amaze your editor, and you’ll earn her respect so she’ll leave you alone to produce the words that she can then cross out, rewrite, move around and generally improve.
If you’re just starting, time yourself for 15 minutes. Read an inspirational line from a poem or start from a first line of a novel you like. Start writing and don’t stop until the timer goes off. You’ll bump into resistance (that’s your editor making her presence known). When you can’t think of anything to say, write that you can’t think of anything to say, or that you can still smell the fertilizer the neighbors put on their front lawn yesterday, or that you would rather clean the light bulbs in your dining room chandelier than put up with this torture. But push through the resistance because there is juice on the other side. I promise.
When you’ve mastered 15 minutes, do 20 minutes, keep going. Practice, practice, practice.
