Weekly Writing Practice    

Open to all Students, Faculty and Staff
Wednesdays 12:30-1:35 pm
Faculty Dining Room in Café Lawrence
No registration necessary

Bring a pen and notebook with ruled pages (and get yourself some coffee or snacks from Larry Joe or Café Lawrence). Writing and coffee go together naturally!

What is Writing Practice?

Writing Practice is designed to help us get words on the page more fluently and quickly, overcome writer's block, bypass our "internal critic" (that picky high school writer teacher we carry around in our heads), and to concentrate on writing what we mean to get down on the page.  This is not a class; there is no attendance policy. Writing Practice is an informal, friendly, supportive environment for learning by doing.  However, regular attendance at Writing Practice can help you improve your writing. 

Techniques Used in Writing Practice

Sentence Practice uses proven and successful techniques to build strong, fluid sentences, such as sentence combining, sentence expansion, sentence unscrambling, and sentence imitating.

Prompt Analysis gives practice in analyzing essay prompts, brainstorming, and organizing ideas.  As you do timed writings and other techniques, you will discover that "You know more than you think you do!"

Timed Writing helps overcome blocks and stalled writing by throwing out your "internal critic" and writing what's on your mind without worrying about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or even making sense as you get those ideas on paper quickly.

Writing Practice for Personal Writing gives students, faculty, and staff a supportive group with which to create and share writing projects such as writing for work, fiction writing, poetry, songwriting, journaling, blogging, even graphic and art design projects. 

More about Freewriting

Writing Practice uses the principle of timed "freewriting" developed by Ken Macrorie and  described by Peter Elbow in his book Writing without Teachers and by Henriette Anne Klausner in Writing on Both Sides of the Brain.  Natalie Goldberg refers to the process as "Writing Practice" in her popular book, Writing Down the Bones,

We write short responses to different writing prompts, then share our experience or results (voluntarily) with each other.  The point is to silence that inner critic and get the words flowing on the page as fast as they come into our heads.  Writing Practice is also a good "warm up" activity for any writing project.

There are no grades.  Forget about grammar and spelling.  Leave your "inner critic" and perfectionism at the door.  Writing Practice is a social activity, and we do have fun!

Writing Practice is as important to writing as basketball practice is to basketball. 

Rules for Writing Practice (Freewriting)
Written by Natalie Goldberg, in her book Writing Down the Bones

• Keep your hand moving.  Don't pause to reread the lines you have just written.  That's stalling and trying to gain control of what you're saying.
• Don't cross out.   That's editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.
• Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. 
• Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines of the paper.
• Lose control.
• Don't think.  Don't get logical.  Feel free to write the worst junk in America.
• Go for the jugular.  If something comes up in your writing that is scary and naked, dive right into it.  It probably has lots of energy.