The Computer as Writing Assistant
Freewriting and Outlining
In our section on Freewriting, we introduce writers to the principles of that technique, a device that is said to free the brain from inhibitions and get the words flowing. If you haven't tried freewriting, yet, here's a five-minute Freewriting Exercise where you can practice, online, your own freewriting. Once you get in the habit of freewriting, you can open up a new document, check your watch, and write away. When you're finished, you can highlight the passages that seem useful and then save the document to another folder, called Notes. You can do this exercise even in the middle of a writing project. The more freewriting you do, the more fruitful you will find this exercise to be.With more than one window open at the same time, you can keep a copy of your Outline open on your desktop. This will help you keep task-oriented and remind you how ideas are supposed to flow from one to the next. It is not unheard of, of course, for writers to revise their outlines as they go along and discover new thoughts that ought to be incorporated into the flow of an argument. (If an idea doesn't fit, though, some serious reorganization might be called for, or maybe that idea has to be left out.)
The Computer as Writing Assistant