What’s Writing Practice?

Years ago, I read a book by Natalie Goldberg called Writing Down the Bones. When the book first appeared in 1986, the publishing industry was quite opaque. Few authors managed to break in and see their books in print, so most people assumed writing was the privilege of a select few.


But Goldberg’s book suggested that anyone could learn to be a better writer in the same way that anyone can learn to be a proficient pianist. How so? By practicing!


Here’s a simple suggestion from Goldberg’s book: “One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your mind and body; to grow patient and non-aggressive.” In other words, through diligent practicing, you can train yourself to be a good writer. The more you write, the more you’ll trust yourself. How does this writing practice work?

Six Rules for Writing Practice
Natalie Goldberg explains that writing practice is simple. All you have to do is follow these rules.

1 - Keep your hand moving.Whether you write with a pen in a notebook or type on a laptop, keep your hand moving. If you run out of things to say, just keep writing anyway. Maybe you have to type, “I don’t know what comes next, but something will come to me soon,…” So be it. You’re exercising your mind and stretching your abilities. Resist the urge to check your email or stand up and stretch or wander into the kitchen for a snack.

2 - Don’t edit.If you’re writing on paper, don’t use an eraser or cross out what you’ve written. And if you’re typing on a laptop, avoid the delete or backspace key. If you decide to go back and revise your writing later, that’s fine. But during writing practice, there’s no editing allowed.

3 - Forget about spelling, punctuation, and grammar.You’ve forgotten about editing, so forget about spelling, punctuation, and grammar, too. Writing practice is for content and endurance training. You’re focused on getting your thoughts down on the page and keeping a healthy flow of ideas moving from your brain to your fingers. Don’t let grammar rules stifle that flow.

4 - Let go and lose control.Your mind is a treasure trove of memories, stories you’ve read, conversations you’ve heard, facts you’ve picked up, and sights, sounds, and other sensory perceptions. Let all of these wonders meld together and produce writing that knocks your socks off. Does it sound crazy? Good! Will it lead to something magic? Possibly. No one ever has to see your writing practice, so go nuts with it.

5 - Don’t overthink the words.When you write an essay, you have to present a thesis and then connect the dots between A, B, and C. And hopefully, you summarize your thoughts in a well-constructed conclusion. But writing practice is not like writing an essay. Don’t worry about logic or form during writing practice. Instead, shoot for a Zen-like experience.

6 - Go for the jugular.When you tackle your writing practice, don’t pussyfoot around difficult topics. Again, your writing practice is for you, not for anyone else, so you don’t have to consider a possible audience or fear judgment by readers. You might be surprised by how things come out and what discoveries you make when you free yourself to write about anything.

Writing Practice for Students
When I was a kid, texting hadn’t been invented. If I wanted to send a message to my cousin in another state, I wrote a letter, slapped a few stickers on it (today’s emojis), put it in an envelope, wrote out the addresses, stamped it, and took it out to the mailbox. By virtue of our communication methods, kids of my generation got more writing practice.

Snapchat and Messenger don’t offer the same kind of reflective writing opportunities that kids used to get. So writing practice is more important than ever.

When you incorporate regular writing practice into your language arts curriculum, you give kids a gift. They’ll get an opportunity to think deeply and express themselves freely. Please resist the urge to read what they’ve written. It’s enough to know whether or not they’ve completed a free-write.

For most kids, it’s helpful to have a prompt to get them started each day. That’s why I wrote Just Write: 150 Middle School Writing Prompts. While the prompts are designed for middle school students, I know of older elementary school kids and high schoolers who have used it. And one adult author wrote to me and said she had a great time with it as well. 

If you let them choose their own prompts each day, they’ll have even more freedom and can connect their thoughts-of-the-day with a little extra input from the prompt and its associated photograph. For homeschool, start off the day with a 15-minute writing practice session. It will wake up the mind in a non-competitive, holistic way.

Get your copy of Just Write from Amazon. It’s an affordable way to give your students the gift of an agile and creative mind. They’ll feel more confident in their writing abilities, and this confidence will spill over into every other academic subject. 

Don't forget to check out our catalog of literature unit studies if you're looking for a structured component of your language arts curriculum. Each unit study includes vocabulary/spelling, comprehension quizzes, essay questions, unit projects, and helps for teaching literary devices like symbolism, allusions, metaphors, theme, etc.