Freewriting is the best cure for writer's block and a key strategy for invention.

Freewriting is a tried-and-true form of quick, un-careful, non-stop writing which is meant to get you thinking or writing without having to worry about the kinds of things writers worry about in more public arenas (sentence structure, spelling, organization, making sense, vocabulary, sounding intelligent). To freewrite, you have to turn off your inner critic, which often takes practice, but ultimately improves fluency and thinking and generates a lot of ideas. Just jot down whatever comes into your head (even if it’s “I can’t believe we’re supposed to freewrite again”) and keep going (even just to write “I can’t think of anything to say” or “blah blah blah” over and over).

In our class, freewriting is personal and private: you will never have to share your freewriting if you don’t want to.

"And once I’ve read enough, I start on my very first drafts. I sit down to write, and I open a blank page on a word-processing document. My first draft of everything is just free writing what I know and how I know it. I worry about structure and editing and moving things around later. I draft and draft and draft until I decide that tinkering with the draft has become a distraction."

—Tressie McMillan Cottom, qtd. in Toor

Work Cited

• Toor, Rachel. “Scholars Talk Writing: Tressie McMillan Cottom.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 Nov. 2021, https://www.chronicle.com/article/scholars-talk-writing-tressie-mcmillan-cottom. Accessed 5 Dec. 2021.