Selections the writers mentioned in this, Peter Elbow, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron and Anne Lamott, can be found in the Reading page on this site under the folder "Writing Freely/Free Writing".
Prolific Writing (or non-stop writing, or free writing) can be a very useful tool, as well as a reliable practice. What follows is a discussion of the value of non-stop writing. Scroll to the bottom for guidelines and rules to get started.
Essentially, prolific writing is a practice where you fill time, rather than space. Rather than commit to a word count (I will write two hundred words per day) you commit to a period of time, such as ten minutes, and write, without stopping, until the timer goes off. You don't simply write for a period of time. You may have a topic in mind, a prompt, or simply write without a notion of what you mean to say.
You adopt the following guidelines. You choose not to edit. No erasing, not crossing out. You choose to keep writing, no matter what comes to mind. You do not stop to think, but think on paper. If you do get stuck-- that is, if you're mind goes blank or you're uncertain what to say next or if something is the "right" thing to say, you resolve to continue, even if that means writing the word "the" over and over. You keep your hand moving.
You can follow many paths of the practice-- Natalie Goldberg offers it as a part of a spiritual and writing practice, Julia Cameron incorporates it into an approach to creativity through her "Artist's Way", and it's a commonplace in first year writing classes. In an academic context, my thoughts go towards Peter Elbow, who was not the first in composition and rhetoric to explore free writing in classrooms but is largely responsible for the practice taking root in modern writing classes.
I began free writing thirty years ago. I learned it from Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones. I also took a workshop from her. Her writing practice overlaps with her work as a Zen practitioner, and so I came to understand, usefully, free writing as a practice and a way to practice. That is, for a long time I undertook it as a routine. I did it daily and, no matter how it went, I got up and walked away from it. Later, I saw that Julia Cameron, in her book, The Artist's Way, offers a similar practice called "Morning pages." Over the last ten years, as mindfulness mediation has become more common and I learned something about meditation practice, I understood the value that free writing had for me. It became a kind of "state of mind" I could adopt or call up as needed. We often must write on demand and it can be helpful, as the psychologist Robert Boice has put it, to write before we are ready. To simply begin where we are doing what's closest at hand.
Prolific writing also became not just a practice for me, but a form of practicing. I am fond of saying that writing is, like parenting, is something you learn under performance conditions. That is, in high school, you learn to write the research paper by being grading on the research paper. Learning to write one consists of being guided through the process of writing something you will submit for a grade.
By pulling prolific writing into my writing life, I enabled a messy process that taught me the value of a space in my work for writing that I didn't judge, that, in a real sense, only worked if I didn't judge the outcome. It taught me to accept the sound of my own voice and thinking in each moment as it arose. The writer-teachers Mario Ponsot and Rosemary Deen call prolific writing an "elemental skill" for writers: it's value is evident in the practice.
In an academic context, the proponent of prolific writing that comes to mind most readily, and the one who is most tuned to its value in an academic context is the scholar Peter Elbow. While Elbow was not the first to write about "free writing" in Composition and English Studies, his books and scholarship helped the practice proliferate in college writing classrooms. Elbow made non-stop writing a part of his practice when he was a dissertation writer unable to complete his dissertation and if you read his book Writing Without Teachers, you'll find that story there. I bring up Elbow here because free writing can be at one end o the continuum a form of journalling, a routine practice of uncensored thought on paper, it can be a form of automatic writing that emerges into a finished piece or becomes something mined for further work, or it can be a practice that you learn to work with, one you tend and apply to very specific circumstances like those you see when you working on a long project.
Nonstop writing can give you a way to begin a writing session. It can give you a means to generate text, with the caveat that the text generate will become other text as you loop back to it. It can give you a way to “practice” writing-- scales if you will-- so that you can become more comfortable with a voice that emerges at the point pen hits paper, in time, so that you can begin to loosen the editor’s hold-- there is time enough to edit-- and simply allow thought and expression to be as it is now, without judgment, without self correction. It can give you a way to generate ideas and plans, or to move forward when you feel bogged down in the writing. You might loop-- that is, write a sequence of ten minute sessions, reading what came before, and choosing a new line of thought to begin and explore.
The goal of nonstop writing is to fill time, rather than space, to learn to see the editor and set the editor aside. So we don’t sit down with the idea that we will write two hundred words, although it can be pressed into service that way. The more comfortable we become with the sound of our own voices on paper, the more likely we are to be able to allow ourselves to write freely and without censorship, perhaps noting places we can return to later but not lingering over them, setting aside objections to thought and expression because we know that right now, what’s most important, is to allow ourselves to think through writing, since there is always time for second thoughts. It’s our first thoughts we never seem to have time for.
Decide on a fixed period of time and set a timer. You can begin with five minutes and increase from there as you see fit. Remember to end when the timer goes off. It can be good for your confidence over time to know you can end and begin again.
You can choose a topic or a prompt to help you begin to write, keep you going and focus your writing. You can begin writing what is immediately on your mind, or use the writing to review what’s on your mind.
Keep you your hand moving. Don’t stop to reconsider or to polish. If you feel you want to say something differently, don’t erase. I would say it will be more helpful simply to repeat yourself differently. Remember that the idea is not to create perfect prose. Rewriting is an important process. This process puts the clay on the table you’ll work with later.
Follow the energy of your thinking. I often feel this as a bodily sensation, like the feeling of knowing I’ve figure out the right way to go. Unless I am beset by distractions (or abstractions), anxious or perseverating, I allow myself to follow where I feel I ought to go, even if it may not be the intended “target”. There are four reasons for this. One is that this process is about suspending judgment, so I try not to “practice judgement” when I am “practicing free writing”. The second is that I know I will return. The third is that my experience has been if I keep one thing out, I keep something else out and that that thing may be what I’m looking for, even if that thing is not an idea, but a feeling. Finally, it is good to give oneself a chance to surprise oneself.
Explore you the landscape of your mind or an idea. Turn it, turn it again. Be concrete in your description and risk saying things in ways that may be new or unusual to you.
If you find that you are “stuck”-- that is, that you have decided that you have nothing to say and can’t think of what to say next, there are several things you can do. One thing that is often recommended is simply to keep writing anything: the the the, nonsense words, repeated phrases. Stopping begets stopping. You’re more likely to get unstuck if you find some way to physically keep going.
Recently someone told me that she tried to free write upon my advice and found herself stuck with herself-- anxiously perseverating, pawing over something that embarrassed her or some negative experience or self-assessment. I understand this and there was a period of time when I free wrote extensively and this was very much the case for me and very painful. So I have given this a lot of thought.
In a meditation practice, such as meditation on the breath, where a meditator while practice awareness of the breath, when her mind wanders or a line of thinking takes over, the practice is to become aware of the thought, to see it without judgement-- not to try and stop it or criticize oneself for thinking, which, after all, is what minds are meant to do-- but to return to the breath. It is hard to do. The meditation teacher Jack Kornfield has said that it is like training a puppy. The puppy wanders away and you bring it back.
I have found that difficult in non-stop writing, since I am thinking on paper and my thinking is the think I am attending to. I am trying to keep myself writing. But when my writing becomes a rehearsal of my fears, misgivings, doubts, and uncertainties, when I am behaving ungenerously toward my life, projects, body or self, I am no longer free writing, I suppose. I am now doing something else more again to writing "I will always do as I am told" on the blackboard a thousand times.
I have a couple of suggestions. One is to simply stop and have that be okay. It would defeat the purpose of the practice to judge the experience or the outcome.
But I have tried other things as well. I began to think of this perseverating as a form of “stuckedness”. When I am stuck, I turn to the concrete. I look around and describe what I see in my physical environment. I describe my physical state. I name what I am doing directly: you are anxious right now about what so and so said. That’s difficult. What are your plans for dinner tonight? Again, by being concrete and turning my attention to something benign that requires focus, it interrupts my attention to something that often, but not always, turns is forgotten as I re focus.
Fill time, not space. Often, when we think about writing, we think of a number of words or pages. Here, your goal is to write for the allotted time without stopping.
Keep your hand moving. Don’t stop to ponder your next move. Don’t go back to cross out and revise a sentence. In writing, there’s always time for the perfect sentence. Now, the goals is just to get your thoughts on paper. If you do get stuck, write “the the the.” When I get stuck, I also write about my emotional or physical state or make detailed observations of my surroundings.
Don’t think, think on paper. Put the thoughts that are in your head on the page. Don’t censor yourself. If you feel an impulse to change directions, follow it. Explore.
Be concrete. In your descriptions or ruminations, seek the particular.
Get up and walk away. Your goal wasn’t to be perfect. Sometimes sessions are lousy, sometimes, routine, sometimes marvelous. Since there is no way to get this wrong don’t bother yourself with thoughts like “I hope I did this right. My writing isn’t free enough. I mostly wrote the the the.” Just come back tomorrow.
Commit to writing regularly. Some do this daily. Elbow suggests at least three times a week. Routine helps with this, though.