My Freewriting Journey: My Escape from Mental Constipation

@mariannewest of the Awesome #freewrite challenge is inviting those of us who have posted more than 20 freewrites to write a post about our freewriting experience along with link to our favorite freewrites thus far. You can check out the details and latest freewrite here

My husband introduced me to the steemit blogging platform last October (2017) and I was really excited at the idea of being able to write again… and to actually make money at it? Holy beans! THAT was a new and exciting development!

As I looked into the steemit site, I got more and more excited. This felt like HOME. Seriously, I blogged on livejournal for 13 years, almost always at least once a day, sometimes 4+ times a day for months at a time. I have sorely missed the interaction and deep conversations that arose from that social site and have wanted something similar for ages. The more I looked through other steemit blogs, the more I felt like I had found that home again!

The Problem: (and it was a big one)

I couldn’t even THINK of where to begin. I was stuck, and stuck HARD. I would sit down to write and just internally freak out a little as the cursor sitting on the ocean of my blank page stared at me accusingly. I didn’t know where to start, I didn’t know what direction to take. I really wanted to share some of my creative writing, but I had been fighting against severe writer’s block for so long, I wasn’t even sure if I COULD write anymore. I had been perusing the site for a MONTH and had written NOTHING.

The Solution:

I somehow stumbled upon @mariannewest and her #freewrite. I remember quite vividly thinking to myself, “Five minutes? I can’t write anything in five minutes! I have never been able to write short stories. There is NO WAY I can write a short story… and in five minutes? This woman is nuts if she thinks someone can write a good story in five minutes. I can think of very few things that can be done in a satisfying way in five minutes, and those things aren’t things that should be done on steemit!”

And I carried on my way.

Then I saw the #freewrite tag again, and with my horrible attitude about five minutes and the ability to write short stories, I looked at it again. This time I had spent a day or two floundering around, my “create a post” page mind numbingly blank, the cursor blinking at me as though that might spur me into action. I was ready. I took my bad attitude and thought, “Well fine then. I will write for five minutes. But it’s going to suck.”

My other, slightly more positive self said, “Okay, but if it sucks, at least everyone will know you only spent five minutes on it, so they won’t expect anything! Go You!”

That, for some reason, was very VERY reassuring. The lowered expectations got me. I guess I love the idea of rising above expectations, but only if they’re really really low expectations! :) This is a sad, but true statement about my inner self

_{Look at that, I didn't even make cool title covers back then!}
My First Freewrite: A Hat Out of Your Hair Madam? wasn’t great. BUT I wrote. It was even a three part weekendfreewrite with three separate prompts, so I got to write a story in FIFTEEN minutes instead!

And I loved it! I felt a slight pressure to get a story out that fast, but when the timer went off for each prompt and I had to work the nest prompt into the story… it was exciting to me!

I was able to finish it right up with one last sentence and I was THRILLED. I had done it! I had written a somewhat surprisingly morbid story (not a style that I ever really thought I’d write in… if only I’d known then! Lol!) and it wasn’t bad at all!

I had written something that I didn’t HATE and I was finally starting a blog. A new blog, not based on anything I was doing or an adventure I was on, but just by writing fiction… my dream!!!

I was instantly hooked and wanted to write more and more… I thought I’d write for three or four months and then maybe start to make some money, and maybe start to get some comments or feedback or followers. Instead… well… things went much better than I expected. Thanks to the support of the freewriters, I was encouraged to write again and again. I got upvotes and the next day I woke up to find that my first freewrite had made almost $18.00!!! I was over the freaking MOON! I knew it wasn’t going to be a constant thing, but I was thrilled anyway!
Since then I have written so many freewrites, but weekend freewrites are still my favorites. The 5 minute writing exercises have stoked my creative juices and I’ve written a longer (30,000 words) story that I posted in serialized form on my blog.

A story of a man who is given a magic bag full of promises of a life changing adventure… and a journey through the unexpected to find his fate. CHUCK: The Serendipitous Journey

I’ve entered and won some contests (and lost others) and I’ve written some freewrites that are inspiring me to write longer versions of them (I’m working on a longer version of The Secret Me and Family Secrets at the moment!)

About a girl with some sort of powers that have been passed down from her mother and her Grandmother and who knows what it all entails? It’s quite an interesting story that is coming together into something much bigger than I had originally planned!

I’ve met friends and collaborated on one story with @snook and @wandrnrose7 just as a totally unplanned impromptu thing that turned into this amazing story called Love Always WIns I also did a reading of the story on Dtube, if you want to see and hear what I’m really like!)

I even took it a step further and did a Live! Freewrite at a local open mic night. I had the audience give me a character name (I got “Amanda HugNKiss”) and a topic (The Industrial Revolution) and I told a story on the fly! It was crazy nerve wracking, but I LOVED it. It had all of the elements of a freewrite, but with the addition of a captive audience whose reactions I could SEE right in front of me AS I created the story out of thin air! That was a crazy feeling!

My All time favorite freewrites are probably these:

Her Eyes: A Love Story This one is a love story, but more about how he sees her, what he loves about her… things that aren’t typically considered ‘attractive’ or whatever, but just pure… love from his perspective. I love how this one turned out. Short, but sweet.

This one Her Fondest Memories is another favorite, and another on the topic of love. I literally cried after I wrote it and went back through to reread it and fix my typos. It came from something that my husband says to me quite often and was inspired by thinking of the things I will remember years from now when I think about our lives together.

This one is probably more creepy/horror than others, but it felt very intense and I like how I captured this guy losing his mind and spiraling out of control. A weird thing to be proud of? Perhaps. Still, I like the writing I did here as well The Family Skeletons

And some of my freewrites are strongly based on real life experiences that I’ve had and I guess you could say that I’m working through some of my past traumas in life through writing about the way things might have been…

Done definitely has a lot of influence from one of my stepfathers who was a very angry man. He’s still alive as far as I know… but this story is probably something that happened in my imagination more than once (I know, I know, what an awful thing to say! Did I not tell you I’m a bit morbid?)

Teddy the Protector Ahhh… if only Teddy Bears could actually come to life and protect innocent children. That’s all I’m going to say on that one.

And, let’s end on a better note, shall we? I have been inspired to write absolutely True Stories through freewrite prompts as well. Happy times like when my kids first went Swimming with Dolphins!

AAAnnnnnnd not so fun times when they were traveling on the sailboat from Turks and Caicos to the Dominican Republic and were hit by a huge storm and a rogue wave in my side of the story Living the Storm

All that being said, sorry for the novel length of this post!!! Freewrites have changed my life. I love them and have been inspired so much by the writing, but even moreso the community that gathers around you when you find them. The support and encouragement from other writers, other people that just want to encourage others… it is tremendous! I have never felt so accepted and appreciated in a group of people outside of my family and I love it. I encourage everyone to give it a try… if you’ve ever thought about writing or just need something to take your mind off of life in general, give it a try. It’s only five minutes, what have you got to lose?

One last thing: MY PROCESS goes something like this:

First, I don't like to see the prompt until I'm ready to write. I have an online timer bookmarked on my laptop and as soon as I've read the prompt, I go to my "Writing" google doc (that stays open all the time for ideas, writing, etc) and I start the timer and just write.

I always go back and fix typos, because I find them distracting otherwise. I never edit actual sentence structure or otherwise, unless I post that I have done editing. Other than that, it's just the words that pour out of my brain. Sometimes I'm not even really aware of what I'm writing until I'm done. I never know what the story is going to be about when I start typing and oftentimes I don't even know where the story is going when I'm half way through. The "To be continued" stories are ones that even I don't know what happens next... until I write it!

My husband @serapium lovingly refers to my writing style as "verbal vomit" because I just seem to sit, look at the keys and then my fingers take off seemingly without thought and just spews words out on the page.

NOW I'll let you go! Thank you for your time!

Thanks for those intrepid souls who read all the way to the end! You have an amazing amount of stamina for reading my ramblings!!!