At least once in every student’s life a teacher has asked his or her students to “free write”. They may use this to allow students to decompress, or to get creative thought flowing but personally when faced with this task it is the most confusing and difficult thing to do. After reading both Elizabeth Wardle and Catherine Savini’s articles on this I am now aware that I am not the only person who feels this way. When you are writing something it is impossible to think or write about nothing. The number one quote that stuck out to me in both readings was when Wardle said “The same is true for any other kind of writing—we write in our journals and think of our future selves or anyone who might find the journal.” I resonate with that so deeply because whenever my therapist tells me “write in your journal it will relieve all of your anxiety and make you feel better” but in my head I think to myself, all thinking about writing in my journal does is stress me out. I don’t know what to write about or even worse curbing my writing in case anyone were to ever find my journal. Which really puts into perspective that even when we think we aren’t we are technically always writing for an audience. I never knew other people thought about that so hearing Wardle put that thought into the world opened my eyes to see that mostly everyone (even professional writers) struggle with writing. Which ties us right in to Catherine Savini’s example of the movie “Misery”. After watching that movie I never associated that the torture Annie Wilkes was inflicting on Paul sheldon was an example for how tortuous writing can be, especially for professional writers. Overall, both readings opened my eyes to see that all writing is purposeful and you need to navigate your way through whatever reason you’re writing for, to make it easier on you in the end.
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