When I was in college I had a nonfiction writing class with a woman named Diana Hume George. I've thought about her more than most any of my professors over the years and I'm 100% sure she doesn't remember me at all. I found a couple of the essays I wrote in her class and I'd like to go back in time and thank her for not failing me because, wow, those were trash.
In any case, she had us do an activity that I love. I loved it then and I love it now. I force it on students of mine when they get writer's block on an essay and I tried to encourage a couple of my Italian students to use it as well. Here's how it worked:
Five minutes and a prompt. She would give a prompt like "I remember the last time I..." or "I always liked the sound of..." and she would tap a tuning fork. Your pencil was on the paper when the tuning fork dinged and it was not to leave the paper until she dinged it again five minutes later. It didn't matter if it was coherent, jumbled, or pristine. The only rules were that you could not edit and you could not stop writing.
At the end of the five minutes you could either read it aloud to your classmates or stay in silence while others read.
What made this exercise so wonderful is that you'd find these bizarrely poignant thoughts buried in the middle of a diatribe about how Ramen noodles had so much sodium that you couldn't possibly be expected to live past 45 with them as a staple of your diet. Nobody cares about the Ramen, but that random sentence about finding the right balance between foodstuff and not depriving yourself of what makes you happy? That's nice.
With that in mind and a slow day at work, I did a five minute free-write. I did it by hand because I was thinking about writing by hand and how I don't do it anymore. That was my prompt. Below is an unedited transcript of my five minute free-write. I'd love to know what anyone thinks of it, although I realize that no one's going to comment on this.
Here goes.
"I miss writing by hand. There's something nostalgic about it even though I'm so bad at it. It's a hallmark of days gone by in a time when days gone by are re-inserting themselves into pop culture. But why? Yes we remember the past but that doesn't mean Full House needs to come back. It doesn't mean that bell bottoms are coming back (even if they did in 2003). And it doesn't mean that we need #TBT to be the most popular phrase on social media. This is the most I've hand-written in a really long time and my hand is getting really tired. But it's still a useful skill, right? Do I need this anymore? Can I still feel the emotion of hand-writing in a way that I can't with typed words? Can you imagine writing poetry on a computer? That would be so lame. Why would anyone believe the words? On the other hand, that's how they would read it, so maybe this is all just in my head and makes perfect sense in reality."
I like free-writes.
In any case, she had us do an activity that I love. I loved it then and I love it now. I force it on students of mine when they get writer's block on an essay and I tried to encourage a couple of my Italian students to use it as well. Here's how it worked:
Five minutes and a prompt. She would give a prompt like "I remember the last time I..." or "I always liked the sound of..." and she would tap a tuning fork. Your pencil was on the paper when the tuning fork dinged and it was not to leave the paper until she dinged it again five minutes later. It didn't matter if it was coherent, jumbled, or pristine. The only rules were that you could not edit and you could not stop writing.
At the end of the five minutes you could either read it aloud to your classmates or stay in silence while others read.
What made this exercise so wonderful is that you'd find these bizarrely poignant thoughts buried in the middle of a diatribe about how Ramen noodles had so much sodium that you couldn't possibly be expected to live past 45 with them as a staple of your diet. Nobody cares about the Ramen, but that random sentence about finding the right balance between foodstuff and not depriving yourself of what makes you happy? That's nice.
With that in mind and a slow day at work, I did a five minute free-write. I did it by hand because I was thinking about writing by hand and how I don't do it anymore. That was my prompt. Below is an unedited transcript of my five minute free-write. I'd love to know what anyone thinks of it, although I realize that no one's going to comment on this.
Here goes.
"I miss writing by hand. There's something nostalgic about it even though I'm so bad at it. It's a hallmark of days gone by in a time when days gone by are re-inserting themselves into pop culture. But why? Yes we remember the past but that doesn't mean Full House needs to come back. It doesn't mean that bell bottoms are coming back (even if they did in 2003). And it doesn't mean that we need #TBT to be the most popular phrase on social media. This is the most I've hand-written in a really long time and my hand is getting really tired. But it's still a useful skill, right? Do I need this anymore? Can I still feel the emotion of hand-writing in a way that I can't with typed words? Can you imagine writing poetry on a computer? That would be so lame. Why would anyone believe the words? On the other hand, that's how they would read it, so maybe this is all just in my head and makes perfect sense in reality."
I like free-writes.
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