The Benefits of Free-Flow Writing

Benefits of free-flow writing. Welcome to another blog, where I talk about writing, marriage, marketing, and coaching. Today I’m going to tell you about free-flow writing.

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What is Free-Flow Writing?

What is free-flow writing? Sometimes I talk about writing in the flow through free-flow writing.

You can get into free-flow writing which is to just start writing.

It’s sometimes said that during this process, you’re not thinking. Of course, that’s not really true. Your subconscious mind is always active and it’s guiding you as you do.

Free-flow writing will help with creativity.
Free-flow writing will help with creativity.

Free-flow writing is writing without stressing or worrying about it. Then you do your editing later.

Sometimes this is accomplished by writing as quickly as you can.

Benefits of Free-Flow Writing

Meet Deadlines

If you do free writing in a certain way, it helps you to meet your deadlines. I recommend free-flow writing in conjunction with setting a timer. I

Ideal times are five minutes, six minutes, or 10 minutes. Just start writing and go with the flow.

Utilize a timer.
Utilize a timer.

Of course, it’s best if you have a topic or a word that you use to prompt your writing. Then just go with the flow.

When you’re using a timer and doing, for example, a 5-minute snippet, the time will be your constant and the word count will be the variable.

So start your timer and begin with whatever word you have chosen for your idea and write as quickly as you can. Keep going until the timer goes off.

Then you can either put ellipses (…) there and straighten that out later or you can quickly tie the end together and get ready for the next timed session.

When you do this, you will meet your deadline of getting your rough draft done quickly and easily.

Sparks Creativity

Another benefit of free writing is that it sparks creativity. When you’re doing this free-flow writing, after a while, it’s kind of like you’re priming the pump and things begin to flow easily.

New ideas come and your creativity is sparked.

It’s Your Own Voice

A third benefit of free writing is that your writing is done in your own voice.

Now if you’re writing fiction, of course, a lot of that is going to be done in your own voice.

Free-flow writing allows you to use your own voice.
Free-flow writing allows you to use your own voice.

But when it comes to nonfiction writing, you often will have done a lot of research and you have gotten ideas and steps from other sources.

The free-flow writing will help you to express those ideas in your own voice which is a tremFreeendous benefit to you and to your readers once they’ve gotten to know you.

Helps to Overcome Writer’s Block

The fourth benefit of this free-flow writing is that helps you to overcome writer’s block.

When you have an idea or word that you’re going to start with and a timer you’re getting ready to start, you just take the word and you hit the start button on the timer, and start writing as quickly as you can about that word or that topic.

This can help overcome writer's block.
This can help overcome writer’s block.

Now, sometimes you might wind up writing fluff and it will be things that you will remove during the editing process.

But most of the time, you’ll surprise yourself with how well you are able to express something that you had put off.

Perfectionism

Dealing with perfectionism is a large problem that many, many writers have. We certainly want to have excellent writing, but we can perform that best through the editing process.

If you try to write and edit and make each little paragraph and sentence perfect the first time around, then there will be a lot of stress and you will likely not get through and probably have long days of writing.

It’s Fast!

But if you will do free-flow writing then you will have a rough draft done in just a short amount of time.

Depending on the writing project that you have set up if you are wanting to do a 10-page chapter for a 200-page book that has 20 chapters, then you’ll have 15 five-minute writing projects, which means 75 minutes of writing during a day. Done that way, you will get a chapter a day finished.

You can get your project done quickly.
You can get your project done quickly.

That means that within 20 days, you will have the rough draft of your book!

Then you can go back and edit after that. If you’re a full-time writer, then you may do your free-flow writing first thing in the morning and then you’ll have the rest of the day to go back to your previous free-flow writing projects and polish them for as long and as much as you want.

If you’re like many of us who maybe have full-time jobs or other responsibilities, you may only have a half hour or an hour or an hour and a half a day to write.

In that case, it’s best to get the rough draft done and then have time slots in the days following to perfect the book.

For writing a nonfiction book, it’s a really good idea to write your basic book and after that, turn it into a fabulous book. B

Wrapup

Those are some of the benefits of free-flow writing.

The process helps you meet your deadlines, sparks your creativity, it’s in your own voice, and it helps avoid writer’s block to make writing fun and easy.

I recommend this process to you.

Find it on Amazon.

If you would like more writing tips like these, just click here to find my writing blog.

You can also get my book, “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death” over on Amazon.

If you would like to inquire about my speaking at some event, you can go right here and complete the form and I will get back to you.

I hope you’re having a great day, and until next time, I’m Randy Carney reminding you that YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

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