Peter Elbow’s strategy by way of the This Might Work podcast: Set a timer for forty-five minutes and free-write the entire time, then spend the next fifteen minutes reading what you just wrote and writing a summary that distills everything into one sentence. This sentence becomes the prompt/starting point for your next forty-five minute free-writing session, etc. Continue the process twice more, then on the third time through, what you’re writing is a kind of clean-up or final draft of the piece. And voila, your piece is done! (Without all the frustration of staring at the blank page and not knowing what to write.)
I’ll admit, I use Elbow’s free-writing strategy in shorter bursts (his recommendation is to start with ten or fifteen minutes), but I’ve never tried this longer, more intense version. I want to try it, and yet…
I think what holds me back is that I don’t trust it. I worry that after three sessions of forty-five minute free-writing, I won’t be any closer to a finished piece than if I’d just gone about struggling to write the piece in my “normal” way. Yes, I might get over the hump of not-starting–free-writing does indeed lower the bar for starting–but what if those forty-five minute sessions don’t result in anything but a mess?
Of course, that’s what the fifteen-minute rereading and summarizing is meant to address; it’s designed to help you refine your ideas so you’re getting a sharper and sharper definition of your thesis each time you start another free-writing session. But still, I’m skeptical. What if I can’t summarizing my free-writing into a tidy sentence? What if I can’t even identify a particular central idea or motif? What if I hit upon one neat idea in all that free-writing, but it’s not enough to build on for another forty-five minutes?
All these doubts are precisely what Elbow’s method is designed to overcome. He’s anticipated all these worries and questions, pointing out that by simply following the method and free-writing, we’ll get to something new, to insights and ideas we could never have gotten to if we’d done it the “traditional” way. The skepticism about his method is precisely why it’s needed. By simply starting–by free-writing without worrying or thinking–we get to places we didn’t know we could go.
But we have to trust the process enough to actually begin it.
I can see how this might work with non-fiction, but I’m honestly flummoxed with how this might work with fiction (strangely, I can totally see this working with poetry). It’s in the realm of fiction that I’m most curious to try Elbow’s method and also the most reluctant. You mean I’m going to write all those words and not end up using them in the final chapter or scene?
And yet… what wondrous stories and scenes might emerge if I did try this method? Where might my fiction go if I could trust in this free-writing process and iterate a scene without judgment until finally striking upon something surprising or new that I never could have come up with in my “normal” method of composition?
If I could spend four hours writing one chapter, but in the end, have a chapter that is original, polished, and somewhat “effortless,” wouldn’t I take it? By the numbers, a 2,000-word chapter should roughly take me two hours, so Elbow’s method is technically less efficient, but in fact, I often can’t write a 2,000-word chapter on command because I’m frozen by Critical Voice and it ends up taking me several days to get over the blocks and fears. What Elbow’s method removes is the fear. I’m going to write for forty-five minutes even if most of what comes out is pretty terrible. But I’ll be writing, and by writing, I’ll be thinking and creating and unlocking things my conscious mind couldn’t get to on its own. It’s a way of circumventing Critical Voice. If, after four hours, I knew I would have a great chapter, without all the self-recriminations of Critical Voice and the usual writer’s blocks that stop me, wouldn’t those extra two hours be worth it? Especially if they are fun? If there’s no worry or self-doubt? If it’s just spilling words onto the page with “gusto”?
Getting over the doubt is probably why this method is so effective. Once the writer overcomes their doubt about the process, lets the process take over, lets the words flow, then things happen. Words build upon words, and before one knows it, an idea takes shape, a story forms, a something appears where once there was nothing.
Can I overcome my doubt and take that first step? Can I set the timer for forty-five minutes and trust?
There’s nothing stopping me, really. What’s forty-five minutes in the grand scheme of things? Surely I can find forty-five minutes in which to free-write, and then, if I can find those minutes, I can find fifteen more to read what I wrote and write one sentence that distills it down to the most interesting idea. Surely, if I can do it once, I can do it a second time, and a third. Maybe not consecutively, but over the course of a day or two? And by the end, I’ll have something interesting, won’t I? Something I didn’t have before.
All I have to do is trust.
And start the timer.
