Freewriting in English Composition

Freewriting in English Composition In composition, freewriting is a discovery (or prewriting) strategy intended to encourage the development of ideas without concern for the conventional rules of writing. Also called  stream-of-consciousness writing. Put another way, freewriting is like warming-up on a pitcher’s mound or tossing a few baskets before the real game begins. There’s no pressure because there are no rules, and nobody is keeping score. When freewriting, advises Peter Elbow in Writing Without Teachers, Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing. Freewriting Freewriting is the easiest way to get words on paper and the best all-around practice in writing that I know. To do a freewriting exercise, simply force yourself to write without stopping for ten minutes. Sometimes you will produce good writing, but that’s not the goal. Sometimes you will produce garbage, but that’s not the goal either. You may stay on one topic; you may flip repeatedly from one to another: it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you will produce a good record of your stream of consciousness, but often you can’t keep up. Speed is not the goal, though sometimes the process revs you up. If you can’t think of anything to write, write about how that feels or repeat over and over I have nothing to write or Nonsense or No. If you get stuck in the middle of a sentence or thought, just repeat the last word or phrase till something comes along. The only point is to keep writing. . . .The goal of freewriting is in the process, not the product.(Peter Elb ow, Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process, 2nd ed. Oxford Univ. Press, 1998) Start Writing You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something, perhaps something silly. It simply doesnt matter what you write; it only matters that you write. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.(Leonard S. Bernstein,  Getting Published: The Writer in the Combat Zone. William Morrow, 1986) Planners and Plungers Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute, a midcareer school for journalists, and Don Fry, a freelance writing coach, divide writers into planners and plungers. Like Don, Im a planner who likes to know the central point and general organization of what hes about to write before he types the first line. Roys a plunger. So sometimes he just jumps into a topic and starts writing whatever comes to mind. After a while, a focus emerges. Then he backs out, throws away most of what hes written, and starts over. He calls that first round of writing a vomit draft.In more polite circles, thats called freewriting.(Jack R. Hart, A Writers Coach: An Editors Guide to Words That Work. Random House, 2006) Freewriting in a Journal Freewriting can be compared to the warming-up exercises that athletes perform; freewriting limbers up the muscles of your mind gets you in the mood, undams the stream of language.  Here is a bit of practical advice: if you have mental writers cramp, merely sit down with your  journal  and start entering words in it, just as they pop into your mind; dont even think about sentences necessarily, but fill a complete page of your journal with spontaneously discovered words. There is a good chance that this uncontrolled, effortless writing will begin to assume a direction that you can follow.(W. Ross Winterowd,  The Contemporary Writer: A Practical Rhetoric, 2nd ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981) Freespeaking If you are better at talking out than writing out your ideas, try freespeaking, the talking version of freewriting. Begin by speaking into a tape recorder or into a computer with voice-recognition software, and just keep talking about your topic for at least seven to ten minutes. Say whatever comes to your mind, and dont stop talking. You can then listen to or read the results of your freespeaking and look for an idea to pursue at greater length.(Andrea Lunsford, The St. Martins Handbook, Bedford/St. Martins, 2008)

5 Categories of Unnecessary Scare Quotes

5 Categories of Unnecessary Scare Quotes 5 Categories of Unnecessary Scare Quotes 5 Categories of Unnecessary Scare Quotes By Mark Nichol Each of the sentences in this post demonstrates a distinct example of superfluous use of quotation marks to call attention to a word or phrase. The discussion following each example explains why the scare quotes are extraneous. 1. Companies need to reevaluate, and perhaps â€Å"retrofit,† their existing programs. Retrofit is not being used in its literal sense of â€Å"renovating to enhance structural resistance to earthquake damage,† but analogous use of the word does not require scare quotes, which are helpful only when the analogy is obscure: â€Å"Companies need to reevaluate, and perhaps retrofit, their existing programs.† 2. Such a strategy must include thinking â€Å"outside the box.† Idiomatic phrases, like single words used as nonliteral analogies, are generally understood as such and do not require special emphasis: â€Å"Such a strategy must include thinking outside the box.† 3. So-called â€Å"softer† impediments often require as much attention as technical hurdles. So-called signals that a word or phrase is not being used in a literal or customary sense. Scare quotes signal that a word or phrase is not being used in a literal or customary sense. Redundancy is not necessary, nor is it required: â€Å"So-called softer impediments often require as much attention as technical hurdles.† 4. Information should be restricted to those individuals designated as having a â€Å"need to know.† Words and phrases adopted from specialized contexts- otherwise known as jargon (such an introduction of a concept as this doesn’t merit quotation marks, either)- are either sufficiently transparent in meaning that they don’t need emphasis or definition or should be omitted in favor of clear wording; in this case, a phrase originating in the milieu of classified government documents is self-evident: â€Å"Information should be restricted to those individuals designated as having a need to know.† 5. It is imperative to understand â€Å"what to do† as well as â€Å"what not to do.† Here, the writer invites the reader to glean the key phrases in the sentence, but the gist of the statement is obvious, and the scare quotes are distracting and not at all helpful: â€Å"It is imperative to understand what to do as well as what not to do.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:100 Idioms About NumbersWork of Art TitlesWood vs. Wooden