Category: Writing exercises

Often in our academic writing we’re expected to be sure of ourselves – to sound or be authoritative about something, or to know that we’re correct in what we’re arguing. At a final-product level, this is of course really important. But when we’re just starting out on a project, only writing about something we already…

I think Peter Elbow’s great book Writing Without Teachers was the first place I encountered a rationale for freewriting. Freewriting’s a really useful technology for academic writers in particular. The how of freewriting is very simple: You set a timer, usually for quite a short time (5-7 minutes) and write without stopping, editing, reading what…