20 reasons to do free writing every day

Not sure what free writing is? Read this book. Then come back.

photo credit: sahlgoode

1. It starts you thinking, ticking, letting off steam, moving outside of the mundane, putting you into a creative mode, thinking like an artist or a writer, someone who produces. It sets you immediately apart.
2. It gives you instant word count. Writers will appreciate this.
3. It’s an automatic brain purge. Free write for 20 or 30 minutes, and you’ll clear your brain of all the trash, clutter, detritus, details, and to-dos that are blocking any original thoughts or big ideas from surfacing.
4. So, you could say that it releases your inner genius. The one you didn’t know you had living in your head, because it’s been buried by the hogwash of daily life for so long. Sad, I know.
5. It’s a great way to capture all those ideas… the ones you’ll start having once you get the brain purged and release the inner genius.
6. It’s a great way to plan your day, week, month, life. Or your project. Or your next date. Whatever.
7. Taking notes. It’s what smart people do. Free writing is taking notes of your own brain.
8. Solve problems. Also something smart people do. Free writing will help you solve problems; it’s like a brainstorming session, think tank, and creative writing session all rolled up into one.
9. It will help you get angst and anger off your chest and onto the page/screen, so you can talk civilly to real people in the real world, and so your FB friends can quit blocking all your lame status updates about how angst-filled/angry you are.
10. It will help you decide what you want to think about.
11. It will help you clarify the problems you need to solve. (It’s amazing how often this itself is something people don’t know how to do, and they’re trying to find solutions when they haven’t really figured out the problem yet.)
12. It will kickstart you into productive mode.
13. You’ll leave a record. You may want to also leave instructions to burn it upon your death… or not. Could make a great memoir and bless your inheritors with a bundle, and you’ll be dead anyway, so why not?
14. Say the stuff you can’t say out loud.
15. Impress your create writer friends on Twitter…. “Oh, yeah, just got in my 30 minutes of free writing for the day…”
16. Call it your WIP (work in progress) and feel instantly important.
17. It gives you something to do when you’re on the train/subway/boat/carpool and you forgot your Kindle and your phone’s dead.
18. It makes you look all legit and artsy when you pull out that Moleskin in the coffee shop, and it’s halfway filled with handwritten scribbles.
19. It helps you to come up with more creative ideas than you normally would. If you’re not a writer, free writing will be a new and different medium for you, one that will help your brainy o stretch and grow and come up with new patterns, new thoughts. If you are a writer, free writing will be a new and different way to express yourself through words, one that isn’t about performing or publishing but is all about just letting yourself flow out in words onto the page, letting yourself hang out there with the words you love, have fun with them, play around, get stuff off your chest, listen to the sound of your own voice… You know, what you love about writing in first place.
20. It will help you be more aware. Really. Not in a silly, soapy, hippie way, but in a real way. When you clear your mind of the clutter, and you get yourself focused and thinking creatively for even a few minutes every day, you’ll find the effects spilling over. You’ll be more creative, more aware, more focused. You’ll see more, notice more, and appreciate more. And you’ll have great stuff to write about in your next free writing, because you’re more aware. (see how that builds into a handy little cycle of ever-increasing free writing? YES, friends! That is the master plot! To turn you all into little free writing fiends, busily scribbling your thoughts and creative genius ideas into your notebooks and journals and sketch pads and yes, also on your tablets and laptops and whatnot, and while you are doing that I WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!!!!

Or.
Um.
Anyways, that’s the end of that. I think 20 is enough, seriously. Probably should have stopped at #19….