Is it Possible to Avoid Writers Block?

Freewriting is something that I have never done but always been interested in. I have always felt like keeping a diary or a journal of your thoughts from that day was something that only girls did in movies or tv shows. Peter Elbow talks about freewriting to improve your writing skills. He says that writing ten minutes a day without stopping to pause is a great way to improve your writing skills even if you do not have anything interesting to write about. My favorite part of his thoughts on freewriting was where he said "Freewritings help you by providing no feedback at all." Whenever I write I feel like it is always catered to the audience which is usually the teacher or professor. Writing just for myself would be very different and something that I have yet to do before. The largest reason why I am interested in keeping a journal is that I feel like it would be cool to look back on what you wrote when you were a young 18 year old kid, 10 or 20 years later. Another point that Elbow talks about is that it will be easier for you to write that essay that you would have struggled with in class. Your thoughts come to you and you are just used to writing them down like you do during your ten minutes of freewriting everyday. I know that always happens to me when there is a certain page limit on an essay and I have to fill up more space just to get a good grade. I get writers block, stare at my laptop screen for a half hour without writing down a thing. Another quote that he says is that "The main usefulness in the exercises is not the immediate product but the gradual affect on future writing." I can definitely relate to this because over time I have seen the improvements that I have made as a writer. I haven't done the daily freewriting exercises but just writing in general for class has caused a significant improvement. I kept all of my pieces of writing assignments in high school on Google Drive and when I look back at them compared my more recent essays it is encouraging to see how far I have come.