Write to Discover Your Topic

Use free writing to discover what you want to write about

I have a confession. I don’t always know what I’m going to write about when I start my day. Sometimes, I just start typing.

Often, I have a plan, a topic, an idea. But other times, as I’m letting the caffeine revive me, I just type. But I know that if I keep typing, an idea will come to me.

In Writing Process theory, this strategy is called free writing, which is useful to get the ideas flowing. You just type without stopping, no going back to correct, no crossing out or editing at all, just keep moving forward. You can formalize this process, set a timer, and free write multiple times. You can then review your free writings to see if there are any ideas that interest you to write about, or you can look for patterns as to what your subconscious mind is mulling over. Freewriting is a powerful technique for finding a topic.

Writing to Discover

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve just finished a memoir, a long work that took 3 1/2 years to complete. Even with such a long work, I wrote toward my subject.

My memoir didn’t start out as it finished. In fact, when I started, I wasn’t really writing a memoir at all. I was writing about my brother. I gathered information about him, talked to friends of his, talked to my sister. You see, my brother was an amazing person, and I was often confused with him due to our physical similarities. But he was 10 years older than me, a hippie turned evangelical preacher for the deaf, who founded churches for the deaf in the Pacific Northwest. He also suffered from major depressive disorder, an illness that made him suicidal for 13 years. Finally, during a medicine change, he jumped from the Fremont Bridge in Portland, Oregon, taking charge to end his suffering, something medical science was unable to do for him.

As I probed further into his life, I was struck by the similarities in our lives as well as how different we were. Why was he mentally ill while I was not? My life had taken many dark turns and I was thrown off my path as a scholar, teacher, and writer. When I stood back and looked at my life objectively, I realized I had been surrounded by spouse and family all consumed with mental illness in ways that left me in a supporting role but also left me vulnerable to abuse and abandonment. A decade after my brother committed suicide, I was alone.

About a year into writing about my brother, I realized that T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land provided an almost perfect analogy to my life. This was ironic since I had studied The Waste Land thoroughly in grad school. This was further ironic in that the professor who inspired me to pursue a writing and teaching profession and who taught The Waste Land literature courses that I so loved also committed suicide.

Once I discovered The Waste Land controlling metaphor for my memoir, it was a matter of structuring and sifting and winnowing from all the events in my life to write about. That takes time. Twice in the writing, I stopped for 6 months, letting the ideas settle and percolate.

While this is not an example of freewriting, it is an example of writing toward one’s subject. If I had followed a strict outline, I would not have had the opportunity to discover the connection of my material to The Waste Land. In a somewhat coincidental manner, too, this year is the 100th anniversary of the publication of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. My book is too late to be published this year, but all of modern literature rides in Eliot’s wake.

Free Write Toward Your Topic

For shorter works, you can use free writing to write toward your topic quite easily. Keep your mind open to controlling metaphors, to influences, to allusions, and to topics. You may not know what your topic is when you start to write, and that’s OK. If you are a writer, then your job is to write. Most days, you will be on task, but some days, writing is hard going. Don’t give up. There is always something to do. Read, write, revise, edit, repeat. There is always something to do.

At the start of my memoir project, I conceived about a 6-month/120-page project. Before my final cuts and edits, my manuscript was almost 700 pages and 203,000 words. It’s now a svelte 168,000 words, including notes and appendices. The words “The End” appear on page 497. (Since that time, I have cut my memoir to 98,000 words with “The End” appearing on page 349. I’m in the final cutting and revising stage as I query my manuscript.)

Did I write every day? No. I took two extended breaks. I wrote every day, but I did not necessarily write manuscript copy on the memoir every day. My brain was always working on the project, and I took mountains of notes. Toward the end, for the past 18 months, I wrote almost every day, though I reserved one day a week to not write at all.

In order to have anything to write about, you also have to live a life. It’s helpful to give your mind a break from conscious activity so the subconscious mind can work out and sort through writing problems. Without proper rest and other entertainment, you can become blind to your own efforts.

Discovery Is Part of the Fun of Writing

When I discovered the connection to The Waste Land, it was such a “duh!” (slap the forehead) moment for me. Of course! Of course! And I read the poem again and several books about the poem. The more I dug, the more I found the metaphorical connection to my story was just perfect.

If you’ve ever been a rockhound, you know what a geode is. I love geode hunting. A geode is a roundish rock, almost like an egg. Inside is often beautiful crystalline structures. You can cut or break the geode in half and discover this beautiful crystal that is display worthy in a cabinet or a on a coffee table.

Discovering your voice and your controlling metaphor in writing is similar to finding a geode. Once you find the geode, you turn it over in your hand wondering what marvels it might reveal. And then finally, you crack it open to reveal its inner beauty. Sometime the inside of a geode is spectacular, and other times it’s underwhelming. But you will never know what you have until you try, until you crack that geode open, until you write your way toward that beautiful controlling metaphor.

Moving Memories — Making of a Memoir

I have started a newsletter in which I provide details about writing my memoir and about seeking an agent and publisher. It’s on Substack at My Own Private Waste Land: T. S. Eliot, Mental Illness, and the Making of a Memoir. If you can follow my substack newsletter, it will help me to build audience to support traditional publication.

I am also starting a memoir writing group. If you are interested in reading my memoir and joining such a group, please leave a comment on my substack newsletter.

Just keep writing.

Lee G. Hornbrook taught college English for 25 years and is the editor of The Writing Prof. He has finished his memoir. You can read about it at My Own Private Waste Land on substack.

If you would like to support my work, you can buy me a cup of coffee or contribute to me monthly at my Ko-fi page.