I’ve been deep in the weeds of my manuscript for a couple of years now. The writing is slow, partly because I’m a slow, methodical writer, but also because my subject is traumatic. It was traumatic at the time — past tense now, present tense when it happened — and is traumatic in the writing/reliving.
Some days forcing myself to sit down and write is like a cat’s jump scare when it suddenly spots a cucumber. (Come on, you've seen the videos!)
The act of beginning stops me cold. I can’t start because I know how I’ll feel, and I don’t want to go through it today.
When most people hear “free writing,” they think of what’s taught in college composition—writing nonstop for 10 or 15 minutes without worrying about structure or grammar. That’s a valid way to use the tool in certain circumstances.
I’ve lately taken to free writing to get myself over the hump of anxiety. Just get it down. Just get something down. As Jodi Picoult said, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
I also fight to stop writing to research. My usual self-distraction is not doom scrolling the news but hitting the brakes to fact-check mid-draft. Now, when I hit a spot where I need more information, I just drop a note IN ALL CAPS so they’re easily spotted in editing. Something like: INSERT DESCRIPTION HERE or CHECK NAME or RESEARCH STATS.
Order is irrelevant. I jump ahead to a different section or write whatever thought is coming through most clearly.
It’s less about writing neatly and more about capturing ideas before they disappear.
Writing is how we write. Messy, jumbled, ugly…no problem. Unless we write, we cannot be writers.
When writer-me plows ahead to fill the page(s) with words, editor-me can then glide in with the calmness of a Harvey Keitel-style problem-fixer, cool as a cucumber CLICHE, and no jump scare to follow.