Random Writing: Beyond Freewriting

Okay, it’s payback time. Promised I was gonna speak a little more on this writing device in my last post. I stumbled on stuff in my journal worth blogging. Here it is.

Sometimes, influenced by a strong current of inspiration, a poet or writer puts words down without deliberation or careful planning which produces craft and often without a clear direction where the writing is going to come out.

Robert Wallace in his book, Writing Poems quotes William Stafford:

“Random writing – free associating, just putting anything down, however nonsequential or silly, like talking on paper.”

Often our mind grapples with a word, a phrase, an idea or an image-however minute or infinitesimal but usually, (and this is the blessing random writing offers) when we stalk our desks our mind (the part we are prone to manipulate) is a white sheet – a blank. Random writing can occur when a sudden gust of inspiration overwhelms a writer and we spill words on the page without deliberate control over the choice of words. They seem to appear completely out of thin air.

Photo credit: 123rf.com

However, the uniqueness of random writing plays itself out when we’re stuck in uncharacteristic dry spells.

Repeating the same sentence as we always do when we freewrite is not permitted. Pick a word, a phrase or a complete sentence. Take your time. Then, back the first words up with another. Don’t worry about making too much sense just yet. The words will figure themselves out, eventually.

There is absolutely no need to set a time limit during random writing.

This is not about getting the junk on your mind on paper so you can finally create a new piece. This is about getting the job done with or without the junk clogging the flow of your juice. The quality of what you set down on the page doesn’t matter at the time. You judge it later.

Freewriting is ambiguous words dumped on the page and forgotten. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Random writing is like a net making a good catch and a bad catch. The editing process will be about deleting the junk just like the fisher dealing with the bad catch later.

Random writing is simple: start with one word chase it with another and another and so on. If the next word or phrase don’t look right on the same line with the first, create a new paragraph.

Random writing is not about how fast you can get words on paper but how you can keep writing meaningful stuff without worrying too much about style, theme or title. The imagery is of a raffle draw, you dip your hands in the box pick the first words that pop at you and so on and so forth. Each time you dip you get a different phrase. And everyone of ‘em, as you’ll find out all in good time is a winner!

If you ain’t careful, you’re apt to find yourself simply swept away, a stranger in a strange land with no clue as to how you got there.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

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