Freewriting+and+Focused+Writing

Natalie Goldberg's rules for freewriting:
 * 1) Give yourself a time limit. Write for one or ten or twenty minutes, and then stop.
 * 2) Keep your hand moving until the time is up. Do not pause to stare into space or to read what you've written. Write quickly but not in a hurry.
 * 3) Pay no attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, or style. Nobody else needs to read what you produce here. The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
 * 4) If you get off the topic or run out of ideas, keep writing anyway. If necessary, write nonsense or whatever comes into your head, or simply scribble: anything to keep the hand moving.
 * 5) If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you're writing, ask yourself what's bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.
 * 6) When the time is up, look over what you've written, and mark passages that contain ideas or phrases that might be worth keeping or elaborating on in a subsequent free-writing session.

**Writing exercises from Peter Elbow's //A Community of Writers: A Workshop Course in Writing//**
**Focused freewriting:** "This is writing where you stay on one topic, but you harness your 'freewriting muscle'--the muscle that enables you to pour words down on paper quickly without planning or worry about quality...[It] is expecially useful for the hardest thing about writing: // getting started. // **Invisible Writing:**"This may sound odd, but you may actually find it helpful to write in such a way that you can't even see the words you are writing" (8). Turn down the screen or write with a white font so it doesn't show your writing at all. It is confusing at first, but you'll get used to it. "It make you write more because you can't pause or you'll lose track of what you're saying." Possible topic: Write about the physical conditions for your writing. Where do you write? When? What implements do you prefer? Do you need silence or do you have music on? (Link to a rationale for using this exercise.) **Collaborative Writing:** "Much of the world's writing is done collaboratively...Collaboration is more companionable, but it can also be more complicated to have to work things out together." Work with one or two others to produce a focused writing on one of these topics (p. 9).
 * Write about a time when writing went particularly well or badly. What was the topic, and who was the audience? Try to tell in detail how you went about writing and what happened. What can you learn from this example?" (6-7).
 * What are some of the most helpful and least helpful things that teachers have done in assisting you with your writing?
 * What makes a good teacher of writing?

__Tapping the Power of Metaphor__, found in Chapter 4 of William Strong's //Coaching Writing in Concept Areas.// Students use concept-trigger words to develop extended metaphors that visually depict and/or explain (in writing) concepts being studied. See p. 59 "Write for Insight". (Book is found in your professional libraries.) "Tapping the Power of Metaphor" can be used in any subject area. A science teacher in Laquey loved it. Strong provides a whole list of nouns that can be used as the metaphor. I used the nouns from my magnetic poetry set. You can create your own list: ship, cloud, fence, river, library, chair, etc. Student takes the topic of study and a noun selected from the list (either by self-selecting and drawing from a hat) and creates a metaphor. "Osmosis is a ship", for instance, with the student explaining how this is so. You can quite easily tell if the student understands the concept from the explanation. Plus, they're interesting to read!