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birdsongstoday at 5:06 PM1 replyview on HN

Have you tried free/automatic writing? I don't know what the term is actually, but just stream of consciousness, putting words to paper, zero filter or pause, straight from the brain.

I usually start with "I don't know what to write but" and then just don't let myself stop. I have to keep putting words down, only rule.

It sometimes starts or turns gibberish, but eventually I hit a flow and real stuff starts to come out, and then I'm just writing.

I've seen the concept applied to art/drawing as well. I highly recommend trying!

Quick edit while I can: after googling this there's a lot of woo/spiritual stuff about it. I don't really subscribe to that, I just think it's a great tool to get out of your head and enter the flow state of writing, when it feels inaccessible.


Replies

borskitoday at 6:14 PM

Yes, actually! (Minus the woo)

Most of my best short stories were written precisely this way. For creative writing, I find that works really well.

I also do a version of this now, which is simply record myself speaking extemporaneously about the ideas I want to write about. It’s all in my head, so speaking it out loud (or writing) helps me organize my thoughts. Then I take that recording, shove it into an LLM, and have it turn it into sentences with punctuation, without changing meaning.

Inevitably, it sucks, but gives me a starting point.