Freewriting: Where It Came From
What freewriting is, who passed it along before Peter Elbow made it famous, and a timed freewrite to try.
Process: Directed drafting1 round of revision
- When
- First-year writing · the first week
- Length
- One class, about 50 minutes
- Slides
- 16, each with its notes below it
Or press P. Arrow keys or a clicker move between slides, F goes full screen, and Esc comes back here.
Today we’re looking at a technique you’ll use all semester, and at its history. The history matters because it’s a good example of how ideas in writing get passed along, borrowed, and built on.
The point is to separate producing words from judging them. You don’t stop and edit, you don’t go back and edit, and you don’t filter your thoughts. Keep moving; fixing can wait. No rereading, no crossing out.
Keep going: whatever shows up in your head goes on the page. And if you get stuck, literally write “I’m stuck” until something comes.
Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers is one of the landmark books in the teaching of writing. It argued that people could get better at writing on their own and in peer groups, without a teacher grading every step. Its first chapter is about freewriting, and that chapter is where most people, including most writing teachers, first met the method.
This surprises a lot of people, because Elbow’s name is so closely tied to freewriting. Macrorie was already using “free writing” with his own college students in the 1960s. Elbow took the practice, gave it a set of rules people remembered, and explained why it works.
The word and the practice show up in earlier work by others. Brande told writers to write fast, first thing every morning, before the inner critic wakes up. Macrorie pointed back to Brande, and Elbow credited Macrorie. So what Elbow wrote in 1973 sits at the end of a chain of teachers and writers passing the idea along.
Elbow gave freewriting a clear rationale: generating and editing are different jobs, and trying to do both at once is what makes writing feel stuck. That argument is what got scholars’ attention. Critics asked whether it builds real thinking; Elbow argued it does. It became a standard move in college writing classes, including this one.
A tie-in to research and citation: ideas have histories. The name most attached to an idea isn’t always where it started. Good academic writers check where an idea came from before they attribute it.
Some people like to freewrite to music, or with a familiar television show on for noise. Others like no distractions at all. There’s no single right environment. The test is simple: which setup keeps your hand moving for the full time?
Handwriting on paper or in a journal is a good way to eliminate distractions, and it keeps you from using the backspace key the way you would when typing. If you handwrite with a pen, you’ll be even less tempted to edit or alter your freewriting. Pencil works too, but a pen removes the eraser option.
Play the clip before the practice freewrite.
Swap in the prompt for the day: click the blank on the slide and type it. Start the timer and write along with the class, on paper or right here on the slide, where typing starts the clock too. The pad won’t let you go back: backspace and the arrow keys are off. Nobody grades this. The reread at the end sets up the next slide. The same pad is on its own page too, with a blank for the prompt and a way to save the freewrite as an image to keep.
Elbow calls it the center of gravity. Reread and mark the line with the most energy. Use that line as the prompt for a new freewrite. Each round expands the idea, lets you iterate, and turns up more interesting material. This is how freewriting turns into a draft.
Click a sentence on the slide to try it. Until there’s a freewrite of your own on the last slide, it uses a sample.
The Copy button on the slide picks up the freewrite from the “Your turn” slide along with the prompt, with the chosen center of gravity in bold, so students paste once.
After students get the AI’s answer, have them compare: did it pick the same moment you bolded? If not, which one would you rather write from next? This is also a live example of citing AI use.
Invite volunteers to read their bolded center of gravity, the AI’s one-sentence summary, or both.
Open the floor for questions about freewriting, the center of gravity, or the AI activity.
Readings
- Peter Elbow, "How to Improve Your Writing through Freewriting Exercises," Writing Without Teachers (1973), pp. 1–4