usually when we set out to write sounding coherent
and Polished are our Central priorities we may think hard before setting anything down we keep an
eye on spelling we may go back and correct words that feel not entirely right all in the hope
of eventually reaching a point where what we have articulated seems accurately to reflect what
we truly think but there is another philosophy of writing at large this one with a very different
thesis as to what good writing might be like while also believing that the ultimate ambition
of writing should be the expression of our genuine thoughts this technique proposes that
our best chances of reaching such thoughts lies in making every effort not to think too much
not to agonize about every word not to go back and correct anything and instead just to write
down everything that comes into our minds the very moment it does so without any interest in
seeming logical elegant clever or even very sane this approach known as automatic writing asks us
to begin by picking an important emotional topic for example my mother or my father my partner or
what I really want and then writing as fast as we possibly can for 2 minutes straight without a
single pause which can feel like a very exhausting and peculiar requirement indeed when we stand back
and read what has tumbled out of us our feelings about our parents Partners or desires May emerge
as really very different from what we had presumed we might find that we hate where we had expected
love or love where we had imagined disain we might discover layers of longing Envy Rage or sadness
that we had kept at B dayto day in the name of appearing that most stultifying and dangerous
of things normal the value of the exercise lies precisely in the extent to which our automatic
writing introduces us to feelings that are at odds with those we ordinarily dare to entertain much
of what we are is damned up inside Us by Scruples by a fear of hurting others by an embarrassment as
to what we want when it departs from the expected path yet this neglect of our true selves is also
what powers our anxiety irritability insomnia and depression all of these species of Revenge for
the real thoughts we've been so careful not to allow into our conscious Minds automatic writing
will not make us into great writers but it will do something far more useful still it will liberate
us from some of the insincerity that are making making us more troubled and Restless than we
should be our chaotic intense two-minute essays will help us to meet the person we have been
but we're too scared to get to know all along