Tuesday, December 2, 2008

"Free" Write

Every day, writers at my work are asked to spend five minutes in a "freewrite." Of course, somehow "free" means something entirely different from what you'd expect. I'm free to write about whatever I want to, but not free to stop and think while writing. Now, for someone like me—someone who rarely thinks before she speaks—I enjoy measuring my words with careful thought before I spill a drop of ink. Here I am, stuck with nothing but ample use of the backspace key to save me from revealing my own stupidity— and that's not much considering the sheer volume of stupidity the dam of my pinky finger on the backspace key is trying to restrain.

So "free" ends up meaning free for all on my boring thoughts, free reign of my fingers to divulge my inner feelings, free speech for that part of me that is constantly forcing the rest of me to apologize for its behavior—oh yes, this is free writing in its purest form.

Lucky for me my feelings today have more to do with my fears of freewriting than they do with (a) how annoying I find something or (b) my secret crush on Batman. Not the cartoon Batman, though. Speaking of Batman, is it just me, or is "Robin" just the epitome of sidekick names? It calls a young man an effeminate name after an effeminate creature which, by the way, is small and completely unfrightening. Poor sidekicks. They might as well have called him Batman's kid sister.

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