Freewrite

So, I gave my students a warm-up today of 'Freewrite'. This is a semi-promptless writing assignment to just get them to think and write to have them to put their new paragraph writing skills to use.

I am writing this right now to give them an example. I guess I'm also doing it because it gives me a topic to write about for my first blog post.

I find it interesting as to what my students write about. When given the freedom to explore ones own thoughts, where does one go? What does one explore? Within the cavernous mind of a pubescent teenager there must be a jumble of loose thoughts firing every which way, so it's always exciting to see the direction they take to make sense of things.

Before we get there, though, we have to break through the red tape. There are many different responses to such a prompt, but the first reaction is automatic for any Chinese student: "how many words does it have to be?" --- a question I receive far too frequently and absolutely loath because I feel like they are trained at an early age to constrain themselves. I always respond to this inquiry with a favorite Chinese word of mine, "随便", basically meaning "whatever you think" or "do what you want".

"Can you help me think of something to write?", or "Can I write about so and so?" is another pet peeve of mine. Again, no longer are they looking at their own freedom of creating ideas, but getting permission or approval from someone else first. Again come the "随便"s.

I find it fascinating to see that some students just copy their notes or school readings into their journal. Maybe it's because it's not where I would want to go, but it seems that completely opposes what my idea of what freewriting is. For me, it's a creative process that has no rules. But I suppose because there are no rules, students should be able to write their notes.

The rest of the students also choose tangible and straight forward writing topics. About themselves, myself, class, or the school. It's a bit ironic because I'm doing the same here, just writing about what freewriting is and the different responses I get when I assign this. This is the first thing that came to mind when I started writing. So I too am constraining my thinking to the tangible.

Which has me thinking ... what is free writing? Because we are so constrained by our language, can we truly write freely? Why don't I just write "uhtnosihc reuskmtnsd hcinsh hkco htnsk hcohtns ihtonshic ouehrh coygpcihotn shg"? That's freedom. Why is that not okay to write? I suppose it is, but it is utterly meaningless from a lexical point of view. The contstraint goes even further with my kids because English is their second language.

That's one reason why I enjoy letting my kids draw too at times. Sure it's not writing in the normal sense, but they are expressing themselves in some way and writing it down.

So I guess we're all constrained in one way or another and we train ourselves to be constrained anyway we can because constraint is around us everywhere. I just wonder what completely unconstrained 'free writing' would look like, and if would it even make any sense. I suppose that's another topic to look at at a later date.

#freewrite