Freewrite is Not Writing for Publishing
As I make my way around this platform, I keep coming across these five minute freewrite posts. Who ever gave people the idea that posting mind dumps was writing fit for publishing?
Freewriting has it’s place. It’s a great process for getting ideas out of the head and onto paper or the screen. It’s like grabbing a some hunks of clay and dropping them onto the table ready to be shaped into a finished product.
Unless you are some rare talent which can bring forth fully formed writing in a stream of consciousness, what you have is some loosely connected ideas ready for you to shape into a story to truly captivate your reader. Or, you may discover the shape needs to be a poem, who knows?
What possesses so many people to toss out their scraps and call it writing? Or, should I say, publish them and call it a post?
Once the mind-dump is complete, why would you not explore what you’ve written and shape it into something that you can be proud of? You may actually have a gem of flash-fiction or the start of an epic short story.
You’ll never know when you just take that dump, toss it into a post and then throw them into a river of other mind dumps. You may get some upvotes from other people doing their own mind dumps. Should make you wonder how much more you could have earned had you cared enough to do the work and make it into something truly of value for people who love to read good work.
Or, are you maybe just doing those freewrites so writers willing to do the real work of shaping words into powerful stories have something to start with?
Now, there’s a thought. Maybe they’re really five minute word prompts for others to make into something real. Is that the service you want to offer?
Excellent commentary on freewriting. While I love the activity of it, and us folks on The Writers Block always encourage writing in general, regardless of the reason or situation, for the sake of pride one should only be putting their best work out there for public consumption.
thank you @negativer. I really expected to get blasted by the freewriters . I'm very heartened to receive the kind words of those who have commented. I agree we need to have enough pride in our work to do our best and then work to make it better.
I wrote about this myself a while ago and people just don't want to hear it.
I hate being spammy, but if you want to know you are not alone feeling like this, you can read my article here: https://steemit.com/writing/@bex-dk/on-freewriting
Sadly, I fear you will find it is a losing battle, as real writing is WORK and not everyone is willing to do it. Those who want to be writers will likely find they regret what they're publishing.
But if you want a community of people who believe in doing the work of writing, check out @thewritersblock.
Thank you @bex-dk, I very much appreciate your comments and knowing that I'm not alone in calling out what others just politely make no comment on.
I've heard about @thewritersblock and the great work they do there. Thank you for the kind offer to check it out.
I apologize for not having upvoted initially. I thought I had but must have been too busy commenting. ;-) You can see from some of the comments on mine that most do not appreciate being informed of the risks and wrongness of their behavior.
Some people don't like to see truths spoken. They prefer to take the easy route and call themself a writer because they are in a group who are all doing the same thing doesn't make it right.
Writing is a craft. They either respect that and work to hone the craft or they choose to put what amounts to rough notes up and call it a masterpiece. Doesn't make it so.
The sad part is that some of them could likely be really good writers if they would do the work that goes with learning a craft.
Until I came on to steemit I'd never heard of freewriting as anything other than a warmup exercise.
and that is all it is here @damianjayclay. A warmup exercise that some are trying to elevate to a writing form. More deterioration of the language of communication.
Thank you for saying that! It's becoming increasingly frustrating to wade through an ocean of freewrites in search of actual stories!
I completely agree with you.
thank you for your kind words @tinypaleokitchen ... I do find the volume of them overwhelming at times.
This reminded me again of the need of better steemit filters.
The ability to search two tags at the same time or filter out a tag from the search... That will help people to find content a lot. (Imagine opening #fiction tag and filtering out #freewrite tag. That will reduce the number of posts that won't interest you a lot.)
How about people quit tagging freewrites as fiction, since they aren't actually written as proper fiction? That would make everyone's life easier.
Or better yet, quit posting them altogether.
That will help 100 times more!!
People editing their work and spending time on it would help even more. Or stop tagging that pre-draft material as fiction. That would work too.
Fiction is something that requires thought, planning and discipline. You can use your freewrite as the base of a piece of fiction. But that doesn't make the freewrite itself fiction.
AMEN!!! Who are you and why are you not a member of @thewritersblock? LOL
THANK YOU for this post. You spoke my heart, as well as the heart of many, many serious writers on the Steemit platform.
thank you for your kind words @rhondak ... it's nice to know there are serious writers who know what it is to have pride in what the publish. That want to have that work polished if it's going to be attached to their name.
Absolutely 100% agree!
It saddens me tremendously to see this attitude you're describing. Not only in what people label 'freewrites', but also in so-called 'philosophy' or 'poetry', that are nothing but mind-dumps. Publishing those things on a public scale like on steem (besides maybe in comment-sections), is not only a waste of a good beginning, as you say, but also disrespectful.
It is disrespectful to those who work to put out quality writing. We all can't be writing giants but there are at least a basic level that any reasonably articulate writer can get to. The real unfortunate part of the practice is that those who are just beginning don't realize, freewrites are exercise not a writing form.
wow, writing nazis. Where does it say that freewrite is writing for publishing ? Why dont you stick to doing what you want to do and leave people to enjoy what they enjoy doing. Freewriting is habit building and fun for so many.
Try getting off your high horses. It must be so cool to a published writer and brag about it...like you're William Shakespeare.
my my ... aren't you taking my opinions personal? last I checked, I have that freedom, just like you have the freedom to be a jerk.
When someone takes their mind-dump and publishes it, they are calling it writing for publishing. You do get that eh? Writing published for others to upvote so they can earn money is commercially published. It's not a difficult concept.
Definitely not William Shakespeare but definitely someone who is willing to not only want to be able to take some pride in what I publish on this commercial publishing platform but am willing to work on creating as polished work as I can.
My my, starting with a logical fallacy..anyway, perhaps your grandoise ego can't accept that this no more than a social media blog, as it neither has the intellect to understand what a five minute freewrite is about. I will add obnoxious and arrogant to your endless list of credentials, although upon edit, replace the list with a simple, 'judgemental half wit'.
Well, thank you little one... just proved my suspicion... bye by little troll. Find another playground.
Pathetic beyond words. Bye to you, Bill :-)
Hi @writerwithin, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Join us on Thursdays for Pimp Your Post Thursday at 11am EST or 7PM EST in the Steemit Ramble Discord or:
If you’d like to nominate someone’s post just visit the Steemit Ramble Discord
While most of the freewrites I post on steem are ones I'm proud of. I agree with all of what you said. And from now on, if I do a freewrite, I'll make sure to post a heavily edited version of it instead of a mind dump.
I know you wouldn't agree with me when I say a freewrite still have a value (though way less than actual books.) These ideas wouldn't have been known if they weren't prompted by this initiative, and not all people are awesome writers or willing to be ones, if not for an initiative like this their ideas won't be known to the world. I think their showing their ideas and even failed attempts themselves have a value.
My only fear (and I think yours is the same) is that this website becoming like fanfiction %90 are just BAD WORKS and %10 vary from okay to good quality, this is against every REAL writer wish. (To be fair I love fanfiction even though I know they are terrible writings maybe that's why I defend freewrite?)
But with all the bad posts in other tags too, I think it's something we probably can't stop, we can only warn against like this post of yours.
By the way, I don't consider myself a REAL writer at all. As you can see from my other comment on this page.
hi again @ahmadmanga, you are clearly putting some thought into this. You say you are not a real writer. How would you define a real writer? I define a real writer as someone who likes to write, is willing to put down their ideas and will work to learn the craft of writing.
Writing is a craft and freewriting has a place as a warmup exercise to get ideas out of your mind and into the light of day. It's like when we learned to write the alphabet and we practiced and practiced making the shapes. They weren't art work but they were our first step to learning to communicate using written language. We discarded those exercises after we finished with them. Like should happen to freewrites.
I just looked at what you put out as a freewrite. I think you undervalued yourself on that post because you called it a freewrite. You did what should be done with freewrites, you shaped it into a short short. IMO, you should have published it as a short short and if you really felt it was necessary made a comment that it started as a freewrite, then do so. Don't put the freewrite material in there.. that's your draft work, not your best work.
I tend to to that, I'm perfectionist and I tend to always think I'm not good enough... Funny, because I tend to see the best in all people's work other than myself.
It's sad that most of those freewriters don't do this, I thought it's necessary when I first started. That's what should change not removing freewriting as without it I wouldn't make that first draft.
I still think I'll leave my drafts there, it'll be better for people to compare how something THIS bad turned into something readable.
Another perspective REAL writers disagree with me with: I always wanted to see the worst works of my favorite professionals to compare them with their best, I know that isn't possible, being a professional means not showing your bad side. But if I ever had fans I want them to have that privilege (Of course, even knowing that doing that will decrease the number of them.)
I agree with you, but I think real writers think professionally, "Will this sell?" "How many people would like it?" "What's the message of the story?" and think "What my next book would be?"
REAL writers can work whatever their mood is, they can force themselves to write something on paper... My writing is just impulsive. Once I had an idea if I didn't make a something out of it fast it'll be on the list of my 'possible' ideas for years (though I used some of them later.)
You can't count the number of things I started on impulse and stopped mid-way, so unprofessional.
WAIT!! why this comment is just me bashing on myself?! I need to be more positive!!!!
You keep insisting on missing a huge point in all this. THE MOMENT YOU EDIT IT ISN'T A FREEWRITE!
Wait... I didn't know that?
Hmmmm...
I understand why you're frustrated now. (Almost) no one can come up with something good in five minutes without editing.
That's a great idea actually:
Most of the stories I write are just my worlds taken out of my mind into paper/internet, most of the ones I post are just IDEAS I thought they are good. I only want to better my writing because I can't always rely on other people writing them for me (I don't want money or IP I just want my worlds to be seen.)
So it's a great idea for me to put these ideas and "Hey, if you want to write a full story out of this, DO IT don't care about mentioning me."
About freewrite, I'll put it in the next comment...
Well, if that is what you want to do is put your mind-dump out there for others to use and are willing to say so, then I suggest you add a tag like #writing-prompt along with your statement that the ideas are free to use.
Ah, thanks, I didn't think of that but reading your post made me think of putting a warning about "mind dumps" in all of my freewrite posts too. But I only do freewrite when I'm in mood (and don't post it if I didn't like the result.) The next one won't be soon.