Re: Shop Talk

Eric Crump (wleric@SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU)
Sat, 20 Jul 1996 14:02:53 -0500


Craig asks:
>Is it safe to assume that most people on
>this list use some form of freewriting early in the writing process?

I use freewriting *as* my writing process.

OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but only slight. But about half the
writing I do happens on lists, newsgroups, and MOOs. And I don't plot these
things in advance or revise them to within an inch of their lives. So I
want to suggest that when we talk about 'writing process' we're not talking
about a singular sort of thing. The writing process transmogrifies with the
writing situation and there's nothing universal or superior about a process
that aims toward a printed or static result, though to look at the
[print]literature, you'd think that was the only process, the only result,
in the world.

Freewriting can be an end rather than only a means to an end.

--Eric Crump