Go with the flow
Earlier today, I co-ran a writing workshop for teens and pre-teens with Ellen Jensen Abbott and Cyn Balog at the Burlington (NJ) Book Fair. Several times during the exercises, our student writers asked, "Can we ..." or "Do we have to ..." And the answer to the first question was always yes, and the answer to the second question was always no. "No rules," Ellen would say.
We were doing free writing: 10-minute bursts in response to writing prompts. Between prompts, we talked about what makes a piece of writing strong, and the qualities of good writing. But the main point of free writing, like any first-draft writing, is just to get it down. To start a story and see where it goes.
During revision, there are plenty of rules, plenty of things to fix. The point of free writing is to create something that can be adjusted, played with, and modified later. Many people will embark on a voyage in free writing in November when they do NaNoWriMo, attempting to get down a first draft of a novel in a month. I've talked many times about why I'm not much of a word-counter, and how it's the quality rather than quantity of words that counts most of the time. But the one advantage to establishing word count as the main goal of NaNoWriMo is that so many writers give themselves permission to just keep going, keep writing, keep adding words. For many, it's the perfect way to get a first draft out into the world.
At the end of today's workshop, a couple of the students had trouble stopping the writing. That's when you know it's really flowing.
We were doing free writing: 10-minute bursts in response to writing prompts. Between prompts, we talked about what makes a piece of writing strong, and the qualities of good writing. But the main point of free writing, like any first-draft writing, is just to get it down. To start a story and see where it goes.
During revision, there are plenty of rules, plenty of things to fix. The point of free writing is to create something that can be adjusted, played with, and modified later. Many people will embark on a voyage in free writing in November when they do NaNoWriMo, attempting to get down a first draft of a novel in a month. I've talked many times about why I'm not much of a word-counter, and how it's the quality rather than quantity of words that counts most of the time. But the one advantage to establishing word count as the main goal of NaNoWriMo is that so many writers give themselves permission to just keep going, keep writing, keep adding words. For many, it's the perfect way to get a first draft out into the world.
At the end of today's workshop, a couple of the students had trouble stopping the writing. That's when you know it's really flowing.
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