Freewriting and Craft: The Language of Self-Realization

Freewriting and Craft: The Language of Self-Realization

Preparation: In this, meditate on the following remarks by a noted author about the art of bringing verbal purpose and precision to random thoughts. Arranging your thinking on the subject in order to form a steadily improving sequence of writing drafts from which represents your sharpest and most creative thinning on the topic.

“There is no royal road to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. ” – Jessamyn West, 1957

Writing: Compose an informative, entertaining, and convincing composition into which you smoothy integrate your responses TO EACH of the following prompts:

1. Seated comfortably at your keyboard, or with a note pad in hand, type or write a full paragraph_of sounds and scribbles that you allow to arise randomly on their own from your mind, feelings, and consciousness. This is called “Freewriting,” and as one writer familiar with the process has said, “Get it down. Don’t worry about errors in punctuation, spelling, or grammar. The most important thing is to let the ideas flow as quickly and freely as possible. If you get stuck, repeat an idea until another one occurs to you.” Your sole aim here in the opening lines of your composition is to write a full, half-page paragraph consisting of an unedited flow of words-akin, let’s say, to a drilling rig plunging into subsurface crude oil deposits and allowing them to gush to the surface before they are transformed into the various grades of refined fuels that power the industries of the modern world. The more undeliberate and randomized your sounds, scribbles, and words are here, the better. Your first paragraph should be filled with nonsense. You’ll see why below.

2. The opening paragraph of your first page now reveals what author Jessamyn West has termed the “jungle of self,” which like all jungles ( from Hindi jangal, “forest”) is chaotic and indifferent to arrangements dictated by “the world” and, so, liberated from any obligations to the fashioning of “neat critical gardens” of writing. Your freewriting sequence should exhibit no concern whatsoever for literary “craft” (e.g., punctuation, spelling, grammar, syntax, logic, etc.), so don’t attempt prematurely to make it sound “proper”. That you already know how to do. The point here is to trace the process whereby you, like all dedicated vocalizers of sight and sound, progressively transform random notions into the smooth and stylistic writing that the world of educated readers can enjoy hearing and reflecting on.

3. Now then, rummage through this verbal jungle and highlight two “seed-words” that you are attracted to. Avoid straining to select “important,” “impressive,” or “clever” words. Any will do as long as you like them. Study them and reveal to your reader what echoes, associations, and meanings they evoke in your mind and memory, going as far if you wish to disassemble and reassemble them into new words of your own making. Describe these two words: are they pretty? ugly? tasty? ordinary? exotic? interesting? uninteresting? Why? Tell your reader what sort of verbal “garden” you might like to create from them, and why.

4. Next, from these two words, plucked from their randomized companions, select one “seed-word” and plant it in the freshly turned soil of your verbal garden-to-be. Purposefully water, fertilize, and nurture your “word-garden” with other words and important elements of sentence structure and meaning – adjectives, nouns, and verbs, etc.- letting these “word-plants” grow to full fruition so that they may enjoy each other’s company, while you, the “gardener” systematically arrange and rearrange your plants according to size shape, species, an appearance. From the chaos of unrelated verbal growths create utility and beauty. Describe your garden’s appearance thus far.

5. Your garden no longer resembles and unkempt “jungle of self,” as author West puts it. “Rather, you are now creating a “neat critical garden.” Accordingly, establish an attractive “garden path” from your consciousness to your word-garden, taking care at this stage of your composition to ride it of any “weeds” consisting of grammatical mistakes and related errors of syntax, spelling, and logic. Make your garden spiffy, so that when you invite your guest-your reader-to stroll with you in the garden you can justify the pride you take in pointing out the humble and disorganized origins from which you have conscientiously fashioned an organized and attractive garden. What, therefore, would you tell your reader is your “word-gardiening” intelligence?

6. In a concluding paragraph tell your reader what you have accomplished here in systematically transforming a chaotic “jungle” of free verbal association into a garden of meaning, into what author West calls “good writing.” In this context and in your own words – NOT a dictionary’s, thesaurus’, Wikipedia’s, Google’s, or textbook’s- describe your own verbal “craft.”

Protocols: Three pages (maximum), double spaced, composed in 10- or 12-pt. font.