Writing takes courage. When we begin new projects or plow through challenging sections of manuscripts-in-progress, we encounter just how scary writing can be. Sometimes this realization comes from the fear of exposure. Putting words on the page for others to read can cause feelings of vulnerability despite the elation we might experience from publication or publicly reading our work aloud. Even before we share what we write, we shrink from the voice of our inner critic speaking loudly in our heads. As we work, we scrutinize word choices, rhythm, point of view, voice, and style, among other elements. The inner critic can be harsh, but we must parry its most negative messages to accomplish our goals. Thankfully this bravery, like a muscle, can be developed and strengthened through practice.
One method that counters those fears, generative writing, aims to corral such dread, encouraging us to take a collaborative risk by writing and sharing our work in community, whether it’s through a writers group, a workshop, or other formal or informal modes. In the process we free ourselves from the ruthless editor inside, enabling us to enjoy the view from our writer’s tightrope. The beauty of doing generative writing with others is that everyone in the group writes, including the person designated to lead the group and keep time. Everybody has a stake in the process, and everyone shares in the risk. Courage and boldness are ideally nurtured, as is the joyful spirit of making something new.
What is generative writing? It is writing something fresh, a first draft that can develop into more than that. Generative writing is liberating. It aims to release the playfulness we all have as storytellers. It unearths the unique impulses we possess as writers. It helps us find our individual voices, and it teaches us that we can write fluently even when we don’t have much time. We focus on the new. As writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell said: “Where there is a path it is someone else’s way.” Generative work helps you find your own path and trust your own way. My practice of generative writing, which supports the writer in a group setting—though it can certainly be done alone—consists of writing for a certain number of minutes, inspired either directly or loosely by a given prompt, then reading my work aloud and listening to my peers’ comments.
I was first introduced to this mode of creating in 2004, when I enrolled in a five-day workshop in northern California sponsored by Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) that focused on generative writing. AWA was founded in Massachusetts by Pat Schneider, who wrote Writing Alone and With Others (Oxford University Press, 2003), a book detailing her innovative writing process, offering a method that counters the solitary writing life in which the negative inner critic can shut down the most talented writer. At the time I was teaching writing and performance at the University of Texas in Austin. The workshop proved to be a creative revelation, and upon returning home I immediately began incorporating AWA methods into my teaching and writing practice.
I found that when I opened my graduate writing class sessions with a ten-minute freewrite—a literary technique that rests underneath the umbrella of the more expansive “generative writing” category—the students seemed more engaged and open to one another’s work. Freewrites are generally less structured than the generative process—a way for the writer to create a storehouse of ideas that don’t require response and can be referred to later. Some techniques I experimented with included asking writers to bring an object that meant something to them and to use that emotional connection to energize what they were writing; to make lists of what might populate a character’s living space and use them to move forward in their work when they were stuck; to imagine an environment and jot down sensory details to make a scene more vivid; and to put a character on the edge of something—an ultimatum, a pivotal moment in a flashback—to layer in the physical reality of a tense moment. Their future writings integrated more textures: colors, sounds, other sensory details, sharper motivations, characters that inhabited actual spaces rather than floated in the void, and movement and gestures that heightened character definition.
Observing such growth in my students’ writing helped me pay attention to my own work, too. For over a decade I have participated in a group that meets once a month; typically there are five or six of us. Over the years we’ve honed this process to a simple method: Each of us brings a writing prompt—a phrase, a sentence or two—to share with the group. We then pass our prompt to another writer who reads it aloud for us. This round of prompt-reading usually creates much laughter and startled reactions. Then everyone chooses one prompt, or a fragment of one, or follows a thought that occurred because of the prompts, and we all write silently in a circle for ten to fifteen minutes. One of us keeps time and delineates, “You have two minutes left,” and then, “Find a place to stop that you can return to.” Afterward we take turns reading what we’ve written to the group and the others comment.
Inspiration happens for each of us when reading aloud. Hearing the words alerts the writer to the cadence and tone of what she’s written and affords an immediate audience response. Some writers combine two prompts in their narrative (one person would famously use fragments of all the prompts from time to time). We observe several “rules” in the process. Rule number one is that responses from the group must be positive, encouraging, or reflective of what “pops” for the listener. The writing is new, and therefore raw, and since the purpose of the group is to generate fresh material, no negative comments that might shut down the writer are allowed. A second rule comes into play as we park our critical selves at the door. When a writer squirms and says, “This isn’t any good” or “I couldn’t even get to the prompt” the group declares, “No critics!” or threatens to shoo the critic out the door. Third, we treat all writing as fiction to protect and honor the writer and allow her to write the most personal story without assuming the writing is autobiographical, which banishes any shame or comments of “I’m sorry that happened to you,” or other such distracting sentiments.
Three things never change in this process: (1) The surprising number of paragraphs and pages everyone writes in the ten-to-fifteen-minute segments during our two-hour gathering becomes a testament to how the presence of others, the energy of community, and positive feedback can boost the creativity of everyone. (2) Knowing that nothing negative will be said about our work releases us to experiment. Somehow the prompts trigger the unconscious mind and unexpected things happen. (3) The group evolves over time as a safe creative space to try different things, learn from one another, and come away with a chunk of new writing—sometimes a complete flash-fiction piece or poem, an excerpt that fits into an ongoing manuscript, or just a boost that banishes the negative feeling of an unproductive period. Generative writing, like rain in the desert, creates new shoots. Playfulness erupts in these meetings, alongside a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect.
Over the years I’ve engaged in generative writing exercises, my own writing has become more dynamic and layered, with increased emphasis on showing rather than telling. I’ll relate an example from writing my new novel, The Surrogate, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in March: Instead of having the protagonist, Alex, tell her best friend about how she feels caught between her cousin, Stephen, and her mysterious new lover, Nathaniel—who has charmed his way into the hearts of most of her close-knit family—I wrote a scene in which Alex is trapped in a car with Stephen that shows the pressure she’s under. Both men mistrust each other; Stephen actively dislikes Nathaniel. Writing in the workshop group, with the clock ticking as others bent intently toward their laptops or over their notebooks, connected me to the strain that Alex feels. Pushed by Stephen’s furious tone and pleading eyes, she edges closer to her car door until she’s plastered against it. When her cousin’s accusations and demands grow more insistent, she cannot wait to escape, as Nathaniel’s tender smile blooms in her mind.
One of the most significant benefits of engaging in generative writing in a group setting comes in borrowing techniques from the other workshop writers, learning how they handle language and pacing, scene and description, and how they create imaginative situations. Two of our writers have mastered the art of using whimsical situations to develop idiosyncratic characters. Working with them over the past ten years, I’ve unconsciously branched out into a genre I’ve always wanted to explore: speculative fiction. Strange environments and happenings invite a writer to experiment with and stretch the boundaries of what characters might feel and experience in other, more realistic genres. I’m tapping into the understanding that worlds and the mores that bind them can be built from the ground up, rather than reflect already-known time periods and locations as in, for example, historical fiction.
You don’t need to belong to a long-term writers group to extract generative gold, however. You can write prompts yourself and share the process with another writer or keep a journal of prompts and your freewrites. A good friend of mine occasionally mines her journals and finds that her spontaneous morning jottings often contain nuggets of a new poem or a gem that stands alone.
I have found generative writing to be a continuing gift. The process sparks creativity in the way rehearsal works in theater, where mistakes are allowed to be made without penalty. In rehearsal, scenes can be redone or revised, yet the process of continuing to work on them often leaves echoes behind, resulting in a richer final product. Similar to what actors discover in rehearsal, the more one writes and reads aloud, the less self-conscious a writer becomes. The fear of writing badly fades, as the writing produced from a generative process is not expected to be polished or “finished.”
The concentrated work that arises during this mode of writing, supported by the energy and feedback of a group, can aid us in producing unexpected moments that strengthen our stories, essays, and poems. The beauty of the generative process is that it keeps writers writing while combating one of the main elements that blocks writers in the first place: the fear of failure. Perhaps we cannot entirely banish our fear, but we can hone our courage and press on.
Lynn C. Miller’s fifth novel is The Surrogate (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026). Her 2023 collection of short stories, The Lost Archive (University of Wisconsin Press), earned gold in the 2024 Midwest Independent Publishers Association’s book awards and bronze in the 2023 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Awards. The Day After Death (University of New Mexico Press, 2016), her third novel, was named a 2017 Lambda Literary Award finalist in lesbian fiction. Miller was a professor of theater and dance at the University of Texas in Austin prior to moving to New Mexico and has performed the work of women writers including Katherine Anne Porter, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, and Victoria Woodhull. The copublisher of Bosque Press, she cohosts the podcast The Unruly Muse and lives in Albuquerque. You can visit her online at lynncmiller.com.
Thumbnail credit: Kyle Zimmerman