Freedrafting is a great way to get started writing. Taking a prompt or a specific interest, jot down a list of whatever associations you have with it and start to write about anything that comes to mind. Don't pay attention to proper grammatical structure or spelling errors. Just Write.
This makes freedrafting a great way to start writing, but it also makes them quite unreadable (by design). In my case, I tend to repeat the same idea multiple times if I feel like I didn't say what I wanted to say the first time. When I can't think of the correct english word, I use german words (my native language).
So I thought about editing the freedrafts I have collected here. In the end, I decided against it. The main reason for this is that it's a great way to release something shitty.

From time to time, I suffer from terrible bouts of perfectionism. This means that my instincts for when something is ready to be published are way off.
I am also just starting out with writing. However much effort I put into it right now, when I look back on it in a few years, I will cringe at what I wrote. That's ok and part of the process. Posting something deliberately unfinished is a reminder to myself to leave my perfectionism behind, and merely do the work I set out to do. The only edit I did was to replace german words with an english equivalent.

Prompt:
Open any book and point at random. Take the noun nearest where your finger falls and make a quick list of anything it suggests to you. Freedraft a paragraph about it.

The noun I used: Dreams

What it suggests to me: Sandman, Neil Gaiman, Delusion, Aspiration

In my cynical mind I am thinking about things people imagine, they want which destroys their life. If you follow your dreams, I imagine someone who does exaclty that, without knowing where this dream comes from. So he does not know that the dream is actually an imagination, it's influenced by the culture around him, or by someone like Morpheus, who can look into the dreams of other people, see them, and manipulate them. And because this person doesn't doubt himself or the dream, he follows it relentlessly and destroys himself and everything around him by doing so. What does this look in real life? In more detail I mean? The person has to be a very moral, good person, only wanting the best for everybody of his friends and family. He doesn't want to cause harm, and he's also quite intelligent. Unfortunately, because he is so convinced of his dream, he doesn't use his intelligence to ask how great this dream is, if it actually makes sense. Instead, he uses it to convince himself of his dream even more, rationalizes it and uses his intelligence to pursue it's fulfillment relentlessly.

Prompt:
Take note of bumper stickers as you encounter them. When you have a half dozen or so, pick one and quickly list what you remember about the car, its make, model, color, condition – or make it up. Then freedraft a portrait of the car's owner.

Instead of actually going outside, I searched on amazon for bumper stickers. You can see the sticker I used on the right.

Let's enter the live of david. David is married, and just turned 34. His second daughter was born last tuesday, and he is miserable. To be more able to care for his family, he had just bought a new car, super family friendlyu. All he ever wanted to have was an Aston martin, but he knew that his would never happen. He felt like his life was over. A bumper sticker was all the freedom his wife allowed him. He was stuck. When he was younger, he had learned to be an accountant. Not because he liked numbers, but because he thought, that it might make good money. Now he was in a job without any possibility to advance, bad salary and worse bosses. He had heard on a podcast recently that Chuck Palahinuk had just finished his Novel fight club when he had been 33. And what had he done so afar? nothing. At laeast nothing to be proud of. Nothing he wanted. If he could start over his life, he would happily do so. Of course, this wouldn't help at all. Just like resetting a stop watch or snoozing an alarm clock with the hopes that it stops ringing, it only delays the inevitable. The only cry for help was this bumper sticker, a marker that he felt dead inside.

Prompt:
Identify the kernel of a story from your experience of one of the following: first memory, angry parent, lost object, unfounded fear, haircut.

For a very long time I had long hair. Basically, from when I was about 15 to when I was 23 I didn't go get a haricut. Well, I got some, about 1 or 2 times in the first year or so, to get some order in my hair. But apart from that I didn't really care. So it was a surprisingly big decision when I decided to cut off my hair, which reached far over my shoulders. I didn't take care of it very well, so it hadn't really grown longer int hee years (one or two I'd say) before I decided to cut it. And the decision didn't come over night. I thought about it for a long time, but was afraid of the change. At that time, my life was pretty stagnant in other ways, I had trouble to commit to anything, really. And commiting to a haircut, where I couldn't go back and have my long hair again (not without waiting several years) was a decision I felt was really hard. I don't know what brought me to finally dooing it, but when I did it, it felt super significant. And I knew it was the right decision. I don't even have a photo from me with long hair any more, and I don't miss it. It still felt like a very big change. Like that cutting my hair would be the first step to changing my life, becoming another person, the better person I wanted to be. Which, of course, was somewhat naively. It didn't change anything over night, only the fact, that my hair dried a lot faster after taking a shower. But I like thinking back at that mooment. Because it really makes a difference. And I felt like another person after this. Another person looking frm the mirror at me.

Prompt:
Make a list of a dozen things you know nothing about. Pick one at random and freedraft a paragraph about it.

Some things I don't know anything about: history, city cleaning, organic chemistry, Beijing, South american food culture, slave markets, chess tactics, darwinism, how to administer a restaurant, quantum physics, political leadership in mali, how to manufacture a pen

So, my random generator picked "organic chemistry". What a shame, I really wanted to write about chess. I'll do that another time, I'm sure about it. Anyway, what can I say about organic chemistry? I had it in school, and it was one of my above average courses. Still, I don't remember anything about it, or nearly anything. It's about the chemistry in combination with carbon. And if I remember correctly that's especially relevant because carbon has the atomic number twelve, so it can create a magnitude of interesting reactions (because it has four valence electrons). It's also super relevant, because it's the basis for all organic life, and much more. Fuel and LSD are two things that come to my mind immediately.

[Follow up: I just visited the wikipedia article of carbon, it's atomic number actually 6. I think that's a great marker for my grasp of this topic]

Prompt:
Write a short passage about why you want to write. Write another about why it's so hard. Imagine someone radically different from yourself in some way. Write a page in which you attribute something of that desire and that difficulty to this other person.

The main reason why I want to write is to improve my ability to cimmunicate ideas. To become a better comminicator. To become better at communicating in general. The hardest part about is to distinguish between the information that is necessary to understand a concept and the things that are neat but make a topic more complicated than really necessary (at least for the beginning). When talking about math or computer science and programming, topics I find super interesting, it's hard to share my enthusiasm or make it understandable why I find the topics so fascinating. And it's even harder to suggest that the essence of it really isn't that hard. Well, that's maybe not the right way to say it. Because it's hard. But so is writing, or painting for that matter. And you can still appreciate a piece of art without having the capabilities to produce it yourself. What is so different about computer science in this aspect? I don't know, if there really is a difference in the topics in itself. I myself can appreciate code I wouldn't be able to write. But yeah, it's another type of appreciation. While art can appeal to an emotional, subconscious part in ourselves, programming is more abstract.

Anyway, someone radically differnt from myself in some way with the same desire to show how the thing they are doing is actually super cool and want to do this by writing. Radically different could mean 20 feet tall. This would change the main difficulty to using a pen or notebook to write. Being the only 20 feet tall human being in the world would be difficult in so many more ways than that, though. Let's go with something more conventional. Let's focus on Tyler, who is an extroverted manager for the city cleaning of Berlin. Each day, the city produces many tons of garbage, in all kinds of varieties. The plastic wrapping around the chicken you bought for dinner. The paper towels you use to dab the meat try. The bones of the chicken after you ate it. The paper box the ordered pizza came in because the chicken wasn't enough (Well, who's overindulging with food here). All that people recognize is that they put the garbage into a garbage container and it disappears. And all the waste water they flush down the toilet reappears as tap water. But they don't care how this works. But Tyler knows that sanitation is one of the most important and revolutionary inventions from the last couple of centuries. Without it, cities like we know them today wouldn't be able to exist. But when he talks about it, all he hears from others is how trashy his job is. Multiple people even start to explain with a condescending tone in their voice, that it's ok. They also had been in a time of their life, where they stuck in a shitty job and had rationalized, convinced themselves that this is exactly what they wanted to do, while being completely exploited by their greedy bosses. But hey, they say, it's great that you remove the trash from our homes. I'm glad that I don't have to be a garbageman.

Obviously, they completely miss the point, but they don't care. And I guess that is ok. But how many people are there, that might be interested in a so tightly organized, and complicated, but well-functioning apparatus, and simply don't have the right approach to this, because mainstream culture accosiates this (purely administrative) job with wading/sloshing through environments comparable to the trash compactor from Star Wars Episode IV.
And how can Tyler change this association? Change their perspective. They don't have to do the job, but at least they might see what is so fascinating about it. And maybe, if some people can reevaluate their prejudices against his passion, they might be drawn into it as well.

Prompt:
Make a list of the first ten things that come into your head. Pick one. Make a list of the first ten things it brings to mind. Pick one and write a paragraph about it.

mind, cocoa, spelling mistake, tea, cooking, inspirational quote, cynicism, books, ruby, time

Books: Buying is more fun than reading, Sivers, Journal, imagined mentor, reading for pleasure, attention span, ideas, escapism, cook books, book burning

I actually associate this idea strongly with Derek Sivers, as I think I read about this first on his blog. The idea is that you use books as your mentors. And instead of having an actual person as your mentor, you can ask yourself: What would X do? And than journal about it, find the answer for yourself. As I do this freedrafting to start writing more stories, how can I write a story based on this idea? The most straight forward thing is to write an epistolary novel that consists only of the journal entries the protagonist uses to navigate a difficult situation in his life. And it is only implicitly said what this difficult situation is about.

After supper, he would always go outside for a walk. While he ate with his staff and family, he enjoyed to walk alone in the park near their house, letting his thoughts wander and watching the sunset. At least if it was the right time of year. When it was winter they ate after the sunset, so it was already dark once he left the house. But still, he would go outside and walk. The park had enough lanterns to be illuminated in the evening. And he always felt that at night, or more accurately in the dark, the park looked like a different world. If the park would be a person, at night it seemed that it wasn't the same person, but a clone that had some of the same memories but interpreted them in a totally different way which resulted in him being in effect somebody completely different. And even if Jack knew the park in and out, at night it didn't feel familiar, like the park he knew at daylight. He could see the familiarity, and knew each path, each trail still at night. But the eery feeling made it feel like a completely different park altogether. And what about this path? He didn't knew this one. He had walked along this path several hundrets of times, and never seen the junction that on the left led to a small path right through the deeper part of the forest next to the park he had always thought of as no-go area. So he hadn't explored it as of now. Had this path always been there and was he simply always lost in thought too much? Without thinking too much about it, he took the path and entered the forest for the first time in his life...