I don’t suggest reading my Free Write before doing your own. Come to the assignment with a blank-page-brain and let your creative mind go where it wants to go. If yours turns out wildly different than mine did, that’s great! It’ll be even more fun to compare and contrast this way. And as always, we’ll refrain from any type of criticizing, editing, or judging with this work – otherwise it wouldn’t be a Free Write, now would it? Revision tools are super important for all types of writers, but first you have to learn to create without constraints. 

Here’s some of what I came up with:

“...a yellow jacket tries to get at my food. I can hear him biting the paper with his pinching mandibles, abdomen pulsating with excitement. the paper crunches and rips in his tiny vengeful jaws. little canary friend for now wipes his antennae with black stick legs, takes a crumb in his mouth, and flies into invisibility. the buzz disappears into the repetition of waves. one after the other they smash and break bubbling creamy white on the grit - stretch of sand. an arm barely golden and just barely warm to the touch sits. en masse. each piece slowly evolves disintegrates, is polished, broken, reworked and still it is always sand. until it is glass. struck by lightning. this is not glass beach where old pieces of ceramic hurled into blue by their disgruntled makers are broken and sanded smooth in death - one of many. the sea, steel and grey like a prehistoric whale melts into the white mist sky. sitting. sitting. sitting. the camera sucks it all up and sucks me up with it to make sense of my nonsense thoughts. sometimes there is nothing to say and sometimes there is sadness - a knot. we move through this carried by thin transparent wings with crumbs in our mouths almost too big to hold. stolen bread. trying to remembering to breathe. dream place where wet dark meets awake...”

Since I use my notebook for doodling too, there were some random extras on the page. I just wrote around them. Notice the way my thoughts jump around but come back to certain ideas and rhythms. I mixed descriptions, observations, feelings, and fictions together as I free-wrote. Not perfect. I spelled lightning wrong.. lot’s of missing capital letters.. not a finished product by any means. But fun and interesting? Yah. For sure. There are definitely some highlightable moments. I could also just peacefully let it be in my journal knowing that because of this exercise and others like it, my writing is getting stronger, and more unique.

It was really quite lovely taking my practice to the ocean. For me, the ocean is the ultimate symbol of creative depth. I like to think I take a little scoop of that ocean-power home with me in my journal every time I write at the beach.

There wasn’t very much of that editor voice popping up for me in this one. Because I have been doing this for so long, she’s learned to sit back and let me Free Write for the most part. But I’m curious what your editor had to say while you were cleaning out the creative channels. What was your experience like?

Tell me below. And don’t forget to include a snapshot and/or a typed excerpt from your Free Write practice as well.