As I make my way around this platform, I keep coming across these five minute freewrite posts. Who ever gave people the idea that posting mind dumps was writing fit for publishing?
Freewriting has it’s place. It’s a great process for getting ideas out of the head and onto paper or the screen. It’s like grabbing a some hunks of clay and dropping them onto the table ready to be shaped into a finished product.
Unless you are some rare talent which can bring forth fully formed writing in a stream of consciousness, what you have is some loosely connected ideas ready for you to shape into a story to truly captivate your reader. Or, you may discover the shape needs to be a poem, who knows?
What possesses so many people to toss out their scraps and call it writing? Or, should I say, publish them and call it a post?
Once the mind-dump is complete, why would you not explore what you’ve written and shape it into something that you can be proud of? You may actually have a gem of flash-fiction or the start of an epic short story.
You’ll never know when you just take that dump, toss it into a post and then throw them into a river of other mind dumps. You may get some upvotes from other people doing their own mind dumps. Should make you wonder how much more you could have earned had you cared enough to do the work and make it into something truly of value for people who love to read good work.
Or, are you maybe just doing those freewrites so writers willing to do the real work of shaping words into powerful stories have something to start with?
Now, there’s a thought. Maybe they’re really five minute word prompts for others to make into something real. Is that the service you want to offer?