The article on Wikipedia defines free writing thusly:
Free writing is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism.
I’ve never been entirely sold on this technique, though I appreciate its goal to stimulate any sort of writing, which is presumably better than not writing when your goal is to write. I don’t mind having unusable material. I’ve certainly written plenty of stuff that was either cut or buried out round back. It’s not like you can do it wrong. Kittens have never been killed due to free writing, not to my knowledge, anyway. Where’s the harm in giving it a whirl?
And so here’s five minutes of free writing.
Fred always wondered what happened when you died. He figured it couldn’t be good because no one ever came back to say stuff like, “This Heaven place is awesome!” On the other hand, maybe post-living was so awesome that everyone who died was having too much fun to come back and rub it in the face of the living. Or maybe you evolved to a higher plane and ended up with a superiority complex and couldn’t be bothered to speak to lowly organic forms of life.
“Oh, yes, I knew them when I was mere flesh and blood, but there’s no way I could ever communicate with them again. We exist at profoundly different levels. I see the ever-expanding cosmos, they see Walmart flyers and what a great deal ketchup is this week. We have no common frame of reference.”
Fred thought some more. His Uncle Joe died at age 62. A bit young–shy of retirement age–but he couldn’t really picture Joe as evolving to a higher form. The guy could barely dress himself without putting his pants on backward. How could he become one with the cosmic firmament? He wouldn’t even know what cosmic firmament was. “Sounds candy ass to me,” he’d say.
And what if you killed yourself? Would you just snuff out in a ball of negative energy? Would you evolve sideways into something not-quite-cosmic? Fred couldn’t get past the idea that killing yourself was cowardly.
And stop. There it is, five minutes and 241 words of Fred contemplating death, raw and unpolished, just like Fred himself, whoever he is.
(I fixed the typos because typos bug me. Actually, it’s not the typos so much as the angry red squiggly lines underneath them.)
I just checked the CBC site. So far no word of kitten deaths as a result of this exercise. I consider this a win. Now I shall absorb the fruits of my labor to write something magical and exciting.
Tomorrow.
