Once, I did a freewrite at my local library, filling three pages in my notebook. Most of what I wrote I threw away, but at the bottom of the third page, I wrote about a white noise machine in my clinic. I recognized a spark there, some kind of juice that I wanted to explore. That’s how I wrote my poem “White Noise.”
I first learned about freewriting from Natalie Goldberg’s book, Writing Down the Bones. Over time, I learned to trust its power. As I did research, I learned that the practice was introduced by Peter Elbow in his book Writing Without Teachers. I remembered this book on the shelf in my childhood home.
I associate this book strongly with my father, who was an English teacher. I still have his copy of that book, his name neatly written and underlined on the cover, McAfee. When I checked the copyright date, I saw how memory plays tricks. The book was first published in 1973, and the copy I have was reprinted in 1977, long after I had moved out of my parents’ house.
Each Freewrite is a Micro Transformation
The book reminds me of the bond my father and I shared over writing. When I was in high school, my father told me I was a good writer, one of the compliments he gave me that I believed. As I sit at my writing desk, I think of my father’s encouragement (and gentle chiding) when a bird sits on a branch outside my window.
Freewrites changed my relationship with writing. They got me started putting words on the page. Not good words, but words that could be typed and reshaped. Reshaped until I had the confidence to hit the “Send” button. Confident that my words withstood the scrutiny of people I don’t know, or worse, the scrutiny of people I know. Some of them received my words with love, and that’s what kept me going.
