The Creation and Existence of Free Right

By Lacey Smith, Free Right Team

Abstract

     In Professor Liu’s English 149 class during fall quarter of 2014 at UCSB, the team called “Free Right” questioned the benefits and ramifications of free writing and created a tool to better enable writers to further understand free writing, as well as give them a platform to improve their personal writing. Team Free Right mutually agreed that free writing is a continuous writing exercise that excludes pre-mature editing. Their overall goal was to ‘get people writing’ and they achieved this goal through creating an online free writing tool that allows writers to simply write without the worries associated with professional or scholarly writing.  

Background

     Historically, free writing “reached its peak of popularity during the neoprogressive movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when experimentation in new methods and content of English instruction was widespread,” (Fox & Suhor). Throughout this time, many conversations were had concerning the impact of free writing, specifically in reference to students. Some claimed there was much benefit to free writing and some claimed otherwise, but, overall, free writing was agreeably an exercise to develop one’s writing skills. The scholastic community has predominantly argued on behalf of free writing because this exercise finds most useful in a classroom setting. Most envision free writing as an exercise used within the confines of an English class, but many argue the benefits of free writing within any level and department of education. Such benefits include: creativity within one’s writing, retaining one’s voice within their writing, further “exploration of a topic," and so on (Fox & Suhor). Yet, as discussed by Mark Reynolds in his article titled “Make Free Writing More Productive”, “free writing is chaotic by nature and full of unusable material.” Hence, like most things, free writing has its implications, but, overall, it serves as an easy way for people to develop their writing. 

Methods

      Team Free Right began by agreeing on a definition of free writing in the interest of honing the general reason and importance of the project. With this definition, being that free writing is a continuous writing exercise that excludes pre-mature editing, team Free Right brainstormed the parameters of their project. Since they aimed to bring free writing to the digital world, they wanted their free writing tool to be available to anyone with access to the Internet, but due to the time constraint of the project, team Free Right was not able to achieve this. Since the majority of the team did not have knowledge of “coding”, one team member tended to drive the conversations based off of what they knew was possible within the time they had to complete the tool. In these conversations, they discussed the notions of different conditions that influence one’s free writing, such as: time, level of education, ethnicity, native language, prompt (i.e.: text, video, photo, etc.), gender, sexual orientation, ability to edit while writing, ability to see what has been written, a beep to incentivize continuous writing, and so on. Again, due to the time restraint on the project, they chose the most important constraints— time, level of education, prompt, ability to edit while writing, and ability to see what has been written— from this list and omitted the rest. In further detail, the time constraints chosen were three minutes, seven minutes, and 15 minutes; the prompt was text; the writer could edit two words before it disappeared into a word bank; and the writer could see what they had written by clicking “reveal”. The timer was implemented in order to incentivize continuous writing by further urging the writer to continue writing because they only had a certain amount of time to do so. The prompt was textually because the team member who created the program found it far too difficult, and unnecessary, to provide any other kind of prompt, based on the context of the project. Also, team Free Right only provided the prompt in pursuance of aiding the writer, but the team clearly stated in the "Professional Disclaimer,” found in the Pre-Survey, that the prompt solely exists as a guide and does not need to be addressed if the writer does not want to. The reason to have only two words shown at a time, and then having them disappear, was to inhibit the writer to edit their writing. Part of team Free Right's definition for free writing includes the lack of pre-mature editing, therefore they hoped this feature would eliminate this common problem. Lastly, team Free Right did not want their participants to be able to see what they had written because it prohibited the participant to return to what they had written, which allowed for a continuous flow of consciousness while writing. Next, the team member with the coding knowledge, built the online free writing tool incorporating these constraints while the other team members enlisted individuals to use the tool they created.

 Regarding the overall appearance of the tool— this was decided by team member Bill Buescher. 

Thanks to the longevity of the project, team Free Right found upwards of eight individuals to participate in their study, hopefully ranging in age and gender, but this was not necessary because these specificities were not being analyzed. These eight individuals each participated in three separate free writing exercises that differed by time and prompt— three minutes (“What’s your favorite book? Why?”), seven minutes (If you had a time machine, what would you go back and change? Why? Where in the future would you go?), and fifteen minutes (Write about something you think about way too much). Before engaging in the free writing exercises, the individual took a Pre-Survey which outlined the reason for the experiment, as well as explained what was expected and that their responses would not be seen by anybody outside of the Free Right team. Furthermore, the Pre-Survey asked whether they considered themselves a writer, if they have ever free written, if they continue to free write, how they would define free writing, etc. After the individual participated in all three free writing exercises, they were encouraged to take a Post-Survey. The Post-Survey asked which amount of time they liked best, if they found the online free writing tool beneficial, if they would change anything about the tool, and so on.   

Findings

Like Julien, I will also send you the specific data collected from our surveys but will not post them here.

     The data collected by team Free Right was extracted from the responses to the Pre-Survey and Post-Survey. Due to potential ethical problems, these responses cannot be posted within this report. Although, in summary, team Free Right learned from the responses that most participants considered themselves to be writers, they had similar notions of free writing, they found the program beneficial, and could find ways to improve the program. 

Conclusion

     The goal to create an online free writing tool was attained. Through researching the meaning of free writing and its history, team Free Right successfully built a prototype for a program that manifests the most important aspects of a free writing exercise. Since time was of concern, the team was only able to have a small group of people partake in the use of the online free writing tool. If time was not an issue, then team Free Right understands that a larger array of people would give them more concrete results. Based on the responses to the Pre-Survey and Post-Survey, the Free Right team concluded that their experiment was an overall success. They successfully created an online free writing tool that allows a large audience to digitally participate in free writing that pertains to the team’s original definition of free writing. 

Resources

Fox, Deborah and Suhor, Charles. "Limitations Of Free Writing." The English Journal 75.8 (1986): 34-36. JSTOR. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.      <http://www.jstor.org/stable/819077>.

Marcus, Stephen. "Any Teacher a Writing Teacher? The Value of "Free Writing” JSTOR. Taylor & Francis Group, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

     <http%3A%2%2Fwww.jstor.org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu%3A2048%2Fstable%2Fpdfplus %2F27565338.pdf%3F%26acceptTC%3Dtrue%26jpdConfirm%3Dtrue>.