Free writing is something that I have not done ever since maybe my freshman year English class. It's something that I have been wanting to do but never had the motivation to do it. But in this class, I think that free writing has opened up my thoughts and helped me generate more ideas now. At first, I was pretty indifferent to free writing but now I feel like it's a good outlet for getting my thoughts down.
At first, it was hard trying to continue to write for five minutes and not stopping. But I found it to get easier as time went on. I would talk mostly about my day or other things going on in my life. I found that if I wrote about stuff I cared about it would make my ideas flow a lot easier. Talking about what was going on in my life was pretty therapeutic and also helped me plan out other things that I wanted to do in the future. Writing these thoughts down allowed me to express ideas that I would've most likely just internalized.
I'd recommend free writing to other people for sure. I believe that even if you aren't a great writer it's still something that can benefit you. You don't need to be a good writer to free write. All you need is an idea and then it's up to you to express that idea. So there is no format that has to constrain your writing and that's something I really appreciate about free writing.
