Freewrite for Exploratory Writing

Here's what I freewrote in class:

Was there a point in your writing where you almost forgot it was an assignment?

The one essay where I found myself writing with no pressure is during my memoir. However, this is completely unfocused and has yet to be polished. I feel such a connection to what I wrote. But there’s so much to tell that I would be the basis of a book rather than an essay.

I did, however, find joy in writing about my family’s cottage and the Finger Lakes region. Again, I have a strong connection to this place. At some points, I felt like I was searching for material, yet at other points I was not.

It was only a matter of time before that piece feel into place and was highly readable. Is it perfect? No, by no means. Though, I feel this has some potential to capture something important.

Describe a point I got stuck?

I found writing my nature essay was the most difficult. It wasn’t that I was stuck. It was that I had this great idea but did not know how to communicate it.

I still love the idea, but the method of which to attack is still unclear. I wrote shit. It wasn’t disjointed, but it wasn’t clean. I felt like I filled the page with words that carried no weight. Yet I still loved the idea.

It wasn’t until I met with Dr. Chandler that the idea began to blossom into words and concepts that I could capture. Instead of focusing on the idea I initially had, I refocused the idea into a slightly different concept. I was only a matter of perspective that made this essay much easier to write. The hardest part is getting past the “Great Idea” that you conceived in your head.

What did you learn about yourself?

With all the essays I had many neurons firing. These neurons, at times, proved to be beneficial. Nevertheless, they also proved to be a nuisance. They often distracted me with new ideas that weren’t necessarily relevant to the work I was writing. The hardest part was focusing on a particular topic. I still find that I have trouble with focusing. Is it an inherent flaw or something that can be overcome?

I believe the latter. It is not that I can’t focus, it is that I focus in a broad sense. Dr. Rich told our senior seminar class to “land the helicopter.” It’s nice to see a broad picture, but then it won’t be clear. The reader won’t know what you’re writing about. Like Annie Dillard, the key to focusing is to describe your object in great detail. After doing so you can draw your conclusions.

Has anything has changed about writing as a craft/gift?

Writing as a craft is a balance between intellectual and emotional. I would be the first to admit that it takes work. But anyone can do it. Writing is not an elitist art. It is an art for the masses. As long as you have the basic knowledge of grammar than you can be a writer. But it’s not only the knowledge. It’s the heart that’s put into it.



After all of this, I realized I'm learning more through my unfinished pieces, one of which I recently finished. So my focus will be on...

What did I learn from unfinished work?