Quite a few years ago now, my human, Annie, signed up for a freewriting workshop with Clare Pearce from Write For Your Life – and she discovered that it’s a fantastic exercise for tackling all sorts of things!

 

Freewriting is where you just write whatever comes into your head for a certain period of time – without thinking about it, without planning it, without worrying about whether or not it makes sense, and without editing it.

 

This didn’t come naturally to Annie as she very keen on planning, and she’s always approached her writing in quite a formal, rigorous way. But, with practice, she started to get the hang of it – and Claire has introduced her to lots of great ways to go about it.

 

In Clare’s workshops, she will give a prompt – usually a short phrase or a question – and then set a timer for perhaps five or eight minutes. Then, everyone writes without stopping and shares what happened afterwards.

 

Annie often finds herself writing about things she never would have expected – it’s led to some ideas for short stories, but usually she finds it’s most useful to explore issues she’s facing or decisions she might be trying to make.

 

Because it’s unplanned and unfiltered, it gives the subconscious an opportunity to come to the surface and offer up insights you might not otherwise gain access to.

 

And, for Annie, it also led to us deepening our relationship!

 

One of the exercises Claire uses is called, “What would the radiator say?” The prompt is to select an object in the room and write yourself a letter, as if from the object in question, thinking about what they might say about whatever situation you find yourself in. During one session, Claire suggested Annie think about what I might say to her in that moment – and a wonderful dialogue was born!

 

It even eventually resulted in us writing our book together!

 

Claire’s also written a book, which goes through the whole process and offers up ideas of prompts to use. Annie edited it and has also made use of it in her own freewriting practice, so she knows how good it is!

 

Why don’t you give freewriting a try and let me know how it works for you?

 

 

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