September marks a new season in what has certainly been one of the strangest years in recent history

For me, it brings with it another tentative step towards what we consider ‘normal.’ Last week I packed up my home office ready for a return to the workplace, having successfully worked from home for five months. And we’ve returned to real life writing sessions at the Maggie’s Centre – albeit in an altered, distanced way, with numbers limited to six per session.

To kick off the autumn term and because new people have joined the group, I’m going back to basics in this session, looking at the benefits of freewriting and using every day objects as writing prompts.

What is a freewrite?

Freewriting does exactly what it says on the tin. It means short bursts of uninhibited writing. The idea is to let the words flow without worrying about spelling, grammar, sense or meaning. None of these things matter in a freewrite. Writing like this frees up the brain and helps get over obstacles. You could compare it to going for a gentle jog or a light pilates session on a day when your body feels tense and tight. It’s a form of exercise for the creative muscles. It’s a tool used by many writers to overcome writers’ block.

Here’s some tips:

• Write uninterrupted for a period of five to 20 minutes
• Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or whether what you’ve written makes any sense
• Write. Don’t think!
• Start with a single word or some other kind of prompt and let the writing flow.
• It can be a list, a series of short phrases, or one long stream of consciousness – it doesn’t matter.
• Keep your hands moving, even if you end up repeating yourself
• Resist the urge to self-censor or edit as you go along – when we do this we may sabotage our best ideas!
• Write whatever comes into your head, no matter how crazy it appears.
• Write just for you, not for an audience at this stage.

Exercise Part 1:

• Choose an object that you have to hand. It can be large or small, mundane or unusual. It might be something you admire, or don’t particularly like. It could be a thing you look at regularly, or simply don’t notice.
• Pick it up, notice its texture, whether it is warm or cool, rough or smooth to touch, look at it from different angles, smell it – does it have a smell? Does it make a sound?
• Does it spark any particular emotions – good or bad?
• Now place it in front of you and freewrite for 10 minutes, using the object as inspiration.
• You may find the writing takes you a long way from the object, or deep inside it, it doesn’t matter.

Have a go, and see where it takes you!

I did this exercise while drafting my first novel. The object I chose was a pebble. The scene I wrote made it into the book. Here it is.

On the step where I sit, somebody has placed a pebble. I pick it up and run my fingers across its surface. It’s not smooth and shiny, as I imagine pebbles to be, but rough to the touch, and mottled, with bits that glint in the light. It fits neatly in my pal. I move my fingers round it. I feels cold. I look at it more closely. It has a pink hue, with flecks of black, a darker red, and grey, and across the surface there are little lines that look like veins. I have never looked so closely at a pebble.

Rita appears behind me. ‘That’s quartzite,’ she says. ‘Metamorphic.’

I vaguely remember what metamorphic means from school. Something that has changed and become something else, after being exposed to extreme pressure and temperature. I look at the pebble with new admiration. It’s withstood a lot, and lived to tell the tale. Its trials have made it more beautiful.

‘Can I keep this pebble?’

Excerpt from Blue Tide Rising. 

The pebble becomes a symbol of Amy’s struggle and growth as the narrative unfolds.

Using objects to depict character.

Things are the stuff of life, and the objects we surround ourselves say a lot about our personalities, our habits, our likes and dislikes, our insecurities, our values, and how we spend our time.

Objects, and the way characters interact with them, are a great way of showing readers something about the character, too.

Exercise Part 2:

• Think of an object you associate with a particular person – this could be a real person or a fictional character.
• Visualise the object, going through the processes of observation you used in the earlier exercise.
• Run through the senses. What does the object look like. How does the light fall on it. What is its texture, colour, smell?
• Now write for 10-20 minutes describing that object in relation to your character. It could be from the character’s perspective, or from the point of view of an observer. You could even give the object a voice. Have fun with it and see what happens!

Next steps

When you’ve completed a freewrite, it’s a good idea to leave it without reading back for a while. When you do read back, you might surprise yourself with what you have created. You may find lines or phrases or whole chunks of writing that stand out for you, which you can use in future writing.

A good habit to get into is writing daily. I personally find I’m at my most creative when I’ve just woken up. Findings from studies of brain circuits indicate creative activity is highest during and immediately after sleep, while the analytical parts of the brain become more active as the day goes on. A 20 minute freewrite first thing is the creative equivalent of a morning jog or swim. It gets the creative juices working which can set you up for the rest of the day. And when you come to review your work, you might just find some gems that you can use in your main project.

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