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Research & Writing with Freewrite: Journalist Celeste Headlee's Process

Annie Cosby

June 18, 2024 | 5 min read

Extensive research, hours of reading, slogging through historical records...

As an award-winning journalist, podcast host, speaker, and author, Celeste Headlee is no stranger to research.

Her latest book, Do Nothing, is a deep dive into humanity's relationship with work over the course of our existence and how we can fix the modern issue of burnout. And it was written entirely on Freewrite.

Of course, tracing the trajectory of human labor and existence required extensive research.

So how does Freewrite fit into Celeste's process?

Join us for an exploration of how journalists approach research and what a research-heavy workflow on Freewrite looks like.

ANNIE COSBY: Can you give us a short history of your journey to becoming a writer?

CELESTE HEADLEE: It depends on what you mean by writer. I've been a journalist for over 25 years. But I got my first book contract in 2016, and that's when I think I became a writer the way most people mean it.

I'm now working on my fourth full-length book, and I've had two shorter books, as well. I’m also a public speaker, so I'm writing speeches all the time.

Essentially, most of what I do, including journalism, involves writing of some kind.

AC: Do Nothing was not your first book, but it is the first book you wrote on Freewrite.

CH: Yes, Do Nothing was the first book I wrote beginning to end on my Freewrite.

And it required a lot of research. I had to read a lot of extraordinarily boring books and labor records about the way people spent their days in ancient Greece and all these other things so that nobody else has to do that.

AC: [laughs] That’s very appreciated.

CH: Yes, I’m going to suffer for you.

But many of the challenges I ran into are the same as with any research that predates the Industrial Revolution. If you're looking at some narrative written by a landowner in the medieval age talking about the behavior of his serfs, that's not particularly accurate.

You need to find the actual records of these things, which often no library in the world has — except maybe the Library of Congress — and maybe even not the Library of Congress, because a lot of these texts predate America.

The other thing is that you have to ask the right questions. That's always the challenge in research.

And you need to be as unbiased as possible. You have to make sure you are not skewing your research, that you're not just looking for the answer you want.

So I had to ask questions not like “Did people work harder before the factories?” But more objective: “How many hours per day did the average manual worker work?” And so much of it is dependent on income level or class, so I had to ask these questions for every single different group of people.

Celeste's view on the go

Photo by Celeste Headlee

AC: At Freewrite, we often get pushback from people doing research-heavy work who say distraction-free devices wouldn’t work for them because of the need to look things up. We obviously disagree, and think research should not happen at the same time as drafting. You do this regularly — what does your process look like?

CH: I do research first, and then I create an outline and sort all my tidbits, all my citations, all the statistics into the outline.

By the time I'm sitting down to write at my Freewrite, I have everything in basic order and printed on actual paper. I put them up on little stands in front of me, and when I finish using a citation or a resource, I put a pen mark through it.

Obviously, you're going to go back later and shift stuff around during the editing process or add citations, and I hire a fact-checker. Frankly, that kind of work doesn't require deep focus. But the writing part of it needs my full executive function.

So I just sit there at the Freewrite, not able to do a “real quick” check on the internet for anything. Not being able to go back, and cut and paste, and all of that stuff, it freed me. And I felt better.

In days past, as a journalist, you sit at the computer and you're pulling tape and blah, blah, blah, pulling clips from interviews... You get done and you're exhausted. You just feel done.

That’s because, A — computer screens are very, very exhausting to your brain and your eyeballs.

And B — it's because I had a billion tabs open. Why do we think we need to keep them open? Do we really think we're saving time? It's ludicrous.

But the way I feel after spending several hours writing without distractions on Freewrite is worlds away from the way I feel when I get up from my computer at the end of the day.

AC: So even if your writing is based on research, the distraction-free environment helps.

CH: And not only that — you do better writing because you're able to do the writing in a way that is straightforward: beginning, middle, and end.

You're sitting down, and you have an outline in front of you, and you're writing the story. You're saying, “Once upon a time, there was a woman who was getting sick all the time and couldn't figure out what was going wrong…”

It gives you a kind of continuity that you don't get when you're constantly flipping to a different tab, looking stuff up, using a thesaurus.

You know, Stephen King says, any word that you found in the thesaurus is the wrong word.

I'm completely paraphrasing his wonderful book on writing, but he's basically saying, stop checking the thesaurus. Use your own voice.

Using Freewrite forces you to do that. Essentially what you're doing is Joan Didion’s shitty first draft.

And you think you're making a shitty first draft, but the beauty of it is that it's not as shitty as you thought it was. It's your own voice. You're explaining what's happening and telling the story in your words — and that requires real focus.

AC: And when you get to editing, you’re sometimes surprised to find, wait, that came out of my brain? Like you said, it doesn’t exhaust you the way striving for perfection and editing-as-you-go is exhausting.

CH: Especially if you're a professional writer, or you do any kind of writing on a regular basis, even though it's creative work, it's still work. And so you can dread it, right?

With Freewrite, I don’t get that dread. I don't dread sitting down in front of it, because it's not going to make me feel horrible.

Working on an instrument that doesn't deplete you… I can walk away from my Freewrite and feel fine. I can go do other stuff that day, which is totally not possible if I sit there in front of the computer for five hours.

It’s making writing an enjoyable experience rather than just this burden.

**Read our interview with Celeste all about the life-changing philosophy she outlines in her latest book, Do Nothing.**

Annie Cosby

Writer

Annie Cosby is the Marketing Manager at Freewrite, a former fiction editor, and the author of seven books — and counting. Her work deals with Celtic mythology and has twice won the YA Indie Author Project in Missouri.

The Haunting

Hitting “publish” on an essay or a blog always stirs up insecurity — the overthinking, the over-editing. The fear that someone will call me out for not being a real writer.

I initially hesitated to make writing part of my freelance work. My background is in photography and design. Writing was something I gravitated toward, but I had no degree to validate it. No official stamp of approval.

Like many writers, I started with zero confidence in my voice — agonizing over edits, drowning in research, second-guessing every word.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

I even created a shield for myself: ghostwriting.

If my words weren’t my own, they couldn’t be wrong. Ghostwriting meant safety — no risk, no vulnerability, just words without ownership.

I still remember the feeling of scrolling to the bottom of an article I had written and seeing someone else’s name, their face beside words that had once been mine.

The truth is, I always wanted to write. As a kid, I imagined it. Yet, I found myself handing over my work, letting someone else own it.

I told myself it didn’t matter. It was work. Getting paid to write should be enough.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

I wasn’t just playing it safe — I was slowly erasing myself. Word by word. Edit by edit. And finally, in the by-line.

The Disappearing Act

This was true when I was writing under my own name, too. The more I worried about getting it right, the less I sounded like me.

I worried. I worried about how long an essay was (“people will be bored”), finding endless examples as proof of my research (“no way my own opinion is valid on its own”), the title I gave a piece (“it has to be a hook”), or editing out personal touches (“better to be safe than be seen”).

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting. Advice meant to help only locked me in. It created a sentence rewritten to sound smarter, an opinion softened to sound safer, a paragraph reshaped to sound acceptable.

I built a guardrail around my writing, adjusting, tweaking, over-correcting.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

It took deliberate effort to break this habit. I’m not perfect, but here’s what I know after a year of intentionally letting my writing sound like me:

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

But playing it safe makes the work dull. Writing loses its edge.

The Resurrection

The drive for acceptance is a slippery slope — one we don’t always realize we’re sliding down. It’s present in the small choices that pull us away from artistic integrity: checking how others did it first, tweaking our work to fit a mold, hesitating before saying what we actually mean.

And let’s be honest — this isn’t just about writing. It bleeds into everything.

It’s there when we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, when we hold back our true way of being, when we choose work that feels “respectable,” whatever that means. It’s in every “yes” we say when we really want to say “no.”

If your self-expression is rooted in a need for acceptance, are you creating for yourself — or for others? Does your work help you explore your thoughts, your life? Does it add depth, energy, and meaning?

My work is clearer. It moves with my own rhythm. It’s less shaped by external influence, by fear, by the constant need to smooth it into something more polished, more likable.

I get it. We’re social creatures. Isolation isn’t the answer. Ignoring societal norms won’t make us better writers. Often, the most meaningful work is born from responding to or resisting those norms.

But knowing yourself well enough to recognize when acceptance is shaping your work brings clarity.

Am I doing this to be part of a community, to build connections, to learn and grow?

Or am I doing this to meet someone else’s expectations, dulling my voice just to fit in?

The Revival

Here’s what I know as I look back at my writing: I’m grateful for the years spent learning, for the times I sought acceptance with curiosity. But I’m in a different phase now.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

I know who I am, and those who connect with my work reflect that back at me — in the messages they send, in the conversations we share.

It’s our differences that drive growth. I want to nurture these connections, to be challenged by difference, to keep writing in a way that feels like me. The me who isn’t afraid to show what I think and care about.

So, I ask you, as I ask myself now:

If no one was watching, if no one could judge, what would you write?