Speedwriting

“Write what you know.” If you’ve been a writer any time at all, you have heard this expression. Truer words were never spoken; at least for the beginning writer. In college, you were required to do “research” papers, all footnoted, referenced and paraphrased. Even as a fiction writer you will be forced to fall back on this kind of work occasionally. You need to know what was happening in 1954, what happened to the Masonic Temple that occupied the corner directly across from the First Baptist Church. What kind of clothes and hair-do’s were popular in the ‘80s? What were Richard Nixon’s favorite foods?

First, however, I feel like we need to get away from the research and literary box that academia draws around our writing. We need to write free before we can conform ourselves to the rules of English grammar. Most of us know the rules already. The hard part is forgetting them long enough to get creative without our internal editor going to work on us before we’ve finished a sentence. One good way to avoid the critic is speedwriting, or writing what you don’t know you know.

For this exercise, all you will need is a watch or clock, your pen and your notebook or journal. Place yourself somewhere pleasant. A spot that inspires you, like a bench beside the lake. Or somewhere comfortable--propped up on pillows in your bed. Put on a pot of coffee and let the fresh-perked smells evoke a memory. Go to a favorite bakery or kick back in your car with the widows rolled down and the engine off. Sit in a public park and observe the people and the pigeons.

When something, anything strikes you begin writing. Maybe it’s a memory or a fresh idea. Maybe it’s a fragment of conversation or the smell of magnolia blooms drifting on a spring breeze. As soon as you have an idea, look at your watch and begin writing. Decide whether you will write 15, 20 or even 30 minutes without stopping. Follow the silver lining wherever it leads you. Don’t pick up your pen from the paper until the time has run out. Write as fast as you can. Forget about grammar and commas and everything you learned in school. If you get stumped, write the same phrase over and over until you move out from it. Or begin something new from there. Start over. There are no rules but these: Write as fast as you can. Don’t think too much. Don’t stop or lift the pen from the paper until the time is up on your clock. A cheap kitchen timer works well for speedwriting as it will signal you when your time is up. If you find you have more to write, then turn it off and continue.

This exercise is fun to do with writing friends as well as by yourself. Ask a buddy to meet you somewhere and do a few of these writings together. Then read them to one another. There will almost always be something in these timed pieces worth using--a phrase or an idea, a line or a even a word that proves evocative. Like telling your dreams, it often helps to have someone listen to what you’ve written. They can hear things that you can’t see. Besides it’s a great way to spend a couple of hours with a friend, especially if you take turns making up subjects.

This is not a new idea. Most creative writing teachers are familiar with it. Natalie Goldberg in “Writing Down the Bones” and Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way” both recommend this form when trying to break through blocks and banish inner critics. But I forget about it as I drudge along in day to day writing and have to be reminded that speedwriting always works to bring me back to what’s fresh but lying quiet as a new potato deep beneath my conscious mind. Following is a 5-minute speedwrite. The prompt was: “Every spring the pond turns over.”

The pond turns over and the dead rise again--Roll back the stone boys we’re bustin’ out the crypt! And man, rising from the dead feels good it really does but don’t expect it not to stink. Don’t expect instant clarity or attar of roses. Forget about it. Nobody comes from that buried place that deep-down dank cave without bringing the stench with them. Don’t recoil no, breathe deep that’s the essence of Earth re-creating Herself. Those missing fingers and toes are full of microbes turning flesh to soil that will feed the mouths of babes. Future creatures are waiting for the fruits and nuts from the tree of thee. But it’s a process like deconstruction--break it down, all the way down to atoms and microorganisms and there in the smelly dark, in the putrefying flesh and decay is new life coming to light. Nobody said it would be easy or smell good or that it had to be pretty. No one promised us a rose garden and even if they did we shouldn’t forget about the thorns and the crumbling compost, the rich black death that feeds the flowers. Every spring the pond turns over.