Free Writing Provides a Powerful Way To Escape Writer's Block

Freewriting has been scientifically proven to help writers focus and gain confidence in their writing abilities.

Researchers found that freewriting exercises helped students develop a deeper understanding of how to produce high-quality academic writing.

Freewriting also helps us to regulate emotions. writing about stressful or traumatic experiences can help lessen people’s anxiety.

Stopping presents the opportunity for your inner critic to come out. By writing nonstop, you allow your subconscious mind to fully take over and New thoughts will come to you eventually.

Whatever comes to mind, write it down. Even if something doesn’t seem to make sense or does not connect to the previous idea you wrote, write it down anyway.

Allowing yourself to write without editing is the only way to free yourself from your criticism. By doing so, you can unlock new and exciting ideas without worrying about their quality or clarity.

Freewriting is similar to brainstorming in that it can help writers discover new ideas. However, brainstorming still involves the stopping, thinking and editing that free writing avoids.

Treat freewriting as an exercise that has no end goal, rather than as an exercise for coming up with ideas. While freewriting often does help writers find ideas, it is okay and still effective if it doesn’t.

Find a prompt that best suits your needs. Prompts can be as simple as “I want to write about…” to help with creative writing, or “I want to argue that…” to help with academic writing.

If you get stuck during the free write, you can always return to the prompt.

Putting pen to paper has been scientifically proven to aid productivity and creativity. Studies using MRI show that handwriting increases neural activity in parts of the brain in a way that is similar to meditation.

Writing longhand is more physically engaging than typing, meaning more of your body is focused on the act of writing. Also, being away from a screen means you are less likely to become distracted.

Save your free writing so you can refer to it while working on current and future writing projects.

Something that doesn’t stand out to you now might be exactly what you need to help you move forward with a writing project down the line.