Up: [[Introspective Writing]] Created: 2023-07-11 Freewriting was developed in the early 1970’s by writing teacher, Peter Elbow. Here’s a good [short article by him](https://peterelbow.com/pdfs/Goals_and_Benefits_of_Freewriting.pdf) As you’ll read in the article, freewriting is intended to get you writing without censoring thought or emotion. To that end, freewriting is an excellent process for introspective reflection. It’s also great for establishing a regular writing practice, and for developing your writer’s voice. [[Natalie Goldberg]] took the freewriting idea, linked it to sitting meditation and Zen, and has written a slew of books about the process beginning with the massively influential *Writing Down the Bones* in 1986. I spent a week with Natalie at Upaya, a Zen monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was September of 2006, right at the time when I’d taken a year’s unpaid leave from my work at a school board in order to write a book. I love New Mexico and very much enjoyed the experience, but it wasn’t without its challenges. Natalie teaches freewriting as Peter Elbow does, meaning without a goal. She began the retreat by telling us that we needed to freewrite for two years before attempting to write anything for publication. Just before arriving at the retreat, I’d been approached by a major publisher and offered a contract for a book that didn’t yet exist, not even in outline form. Being told I needed to wait two years before I could hope to produce anything of value didn’t sit well. I did the freewriting for the week just as Natalie instructed, but after that week I focused on the prompts that would help me either warm up for or go deeper into what I was writing about in my book. This is what Elbow is referring to as ‘focused freewriting’. Please be sure to do some wide open freewriting whenever you can. It really is valuable. But if you want or need to do a focused write, these [[Prompts for Focused Freewriting]] have served me well. **Note**: I wrote this as a post for the LYT community.