12 Minute Freewrite

So here I am at Hofstra and I am blogging. Writing online makes me feel scrutinized, as if I were a gladiator in some Roman arena, waiting for the thumbs-up to spare me or the thumbs-down to ruin all that I had worked for. This scrutiny is not necessarily a bad thing, many people work well when placed in a fishbowl. What I do not like about this blog post is the absolute lack of editing available to me during a freewrite. I'm a journalist at heart and all this fancy "write what comes to mind" stuff is difficult to wrap my brain around. Pieces should be structured, orderly and clear. When I write like this it is just vomit, simple sketches in the sand, irrelevant abstract art that i slopped up on a wall without rhyme or reason. My grammar is probably atrocious and it makes me itch to think about what I'm not correcting. A twelve minute 100 yard dash to the finish-I'm not allowed to look back, I just have to keep my legs churning. I was always more of an endurance runner anyway. The aphorism "slow and steady wins the race" doesn't always apply, but it certainly has a point when it comes to my writing style. In any case, I am trying to make this piece as simple and straightforward as possible, attempting to avoid the ramblings that are all too common when I am ordered to embark on a freewriting session. Perhaps this sounds too hostile. I understand and recognize that for many people freewriting is a useful idea to push ideas out of the head and onto the page, but perhaps it is just too messy for my taste. It turns out I can write a substantial amount in a twelve minute time frame, but what I am writing is probably tasteless and bland and poisonous to consume, like chalk. I've never personally consumed chalk but I can imagine how it tastes. At this point I am floundering, drowning in a sea of my own conscious. Though it is not really my conscious, but rather my self-consciousness that makes this article such a tough endeavor for me to pursue.