A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Thirty-Seven

I often find free-writing exercises difficult, at least the straightforward type where one just starts and goes without editing, where there is no real definition for what the work should be.  For me, it is often difficult to get into a flow.  When I start writing, most of the time I will spend a long while on just the first few words.  Once I am dialed in, the rest may go fast, but getting to that place is not always simple, and freewriting can be quite excruciating for me.  At the same time, I also realize that writing extemporaneously and at speed is a good way to step outside my usual intellectual modality.  The goal of freewriting is to just keep moving forward without editing, and without being concerned about what is already present.  That leaves little room for thinking about much more than the current sentence, the individual word being written.  I think that the issue, for me, is I need to be able to shift my focus, not only just write with the intent, but with a task that I can focus on.  For example, I am thinking that a linguistic task, for example focusing on using a certain letter at the start of each word, might provide me a challenge that keeps me distracted from worrying about the deeper meaning, allowing me to write from a less consciously controlled place.  As well, it lets me think of the writing as a technical exercise, not a serious effort that that my internal editor needs to oversee.  I'm going to give it a go tomorrow, though I know, whatever comes with this first effort, it is worth committing to as an ongoing routine.  It is not a matter of doing it once, but of keeping at it until I make the necessary breakthrough.