Free Writing

What I've Learned From English Class

You know, a year or two ago, I didn't understand free writing. I kept a journal, but it was so structured that it lost the point of being a journal. This year, in my english class, we begin every class with 20 minutes of free writing, completely unstructured. It's freeing, honestly. Whatever's bothering me that day or whatever kept me up all night because I was thinking about it, I wrote about. I just put down words on a page and didn't worry about the quality of it, because those free writes will never be graded. It's also nice because at the end of each quarter, she picks up our free writing notebooks to make sure that we've been doing them, but also to read them and see our thoughts. She said that if there was every an entry that we didn't want her to read, just mark it on the top of the page, and she'd skip over it. I haven't done that yet. The idea that this teacher whom I don't know very well will be reading the things that I've ranted about or thought about aimlessly on the page is kind of cool. She doesn't know that much about me, so there's no pressure of judgement or anything like that. But, I also know there's an audience on the other side of my pencil; the writing isn't pointless, there's a reason for me to express my frustrations about the situation with my friends, the high school up the road banning books, the shooting of Michael Brown. There's a point. An audience. One that I don't have to worry about telling the friend I ranted about what I've said, one that really knows nothing about me except for the ideas I bring to class. It's liberating. I love it.