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Hey Reader,

There’s this guy called Peter Elbow.

Isn’t that a great name? It’s the third brilliant name I’ve encountered in the past week, the other two being Bob Whopper and Jim Bumgardner. The delight I’ve had in these names has been large and ongoing.

Anyway, his name isn’t the point.

His book is.

He wrote a book called Writing Without Teachers and it’s a challenge against traditional writing methods, and especially those taught in schools.

This book is new to me, although pretty old these days — first published in 1973 — and it turns out Mr Elbow and I think along the same lines.

When I work with clients and run workshops, one of the things I get people to do is writing games. There are a bunch I play with, but they all have the same goal: to get you to let go of the need to Do Things Properly and just mess around with the ideas.

Freewriting, basically.

So I thought I’d share the Elbow basics here, and perhaps this way of thinking and writing can carry you into the week:

1. Pick an idea or topic you want to explore. Or, if you don’t know or can’t decide, that can be the goal of this session.
2. Set a timer. No more than 10 minutes to start with. As you get more comfortable with this, you can choose longer sessions.
3. Write without pause. No stopping. No deleting. It’s not about writing fast, it’s about writing continuously. And if you don’t know what to write, write that. Comment on your own stuckness because that will lead to something else.
4. Embrace the extistential crisis that will envelop you as this exercise crashes into your borderline psychotic (just me?) need for control, perfection, and approval from the invisible audience who will never actually see what comes out of this session.
5. When the timer goes off, step back and enjoy your surprise as you realise there are at least a handful of ideas, phrases, or paragraphs that are interesting and could become something rather cool.

Next time you’re tempted to reach for ShatGPT because you have “writer’s block” try this instead. I guarantee you every single part of your life will be better for it.

Happy Monday.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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