Some writes and academics have suggested that free writing can be an important tool for eliciting visceral and emotional experiences that may not have surfaced otherwise (e.g Clark  1997, Goldberg 2005) . Free writing practice aims to remove all constraints about writing by challenging the writer to write constantly; there is no need to stay on topic, worry about spelling or grammar or indeed for the writing to make sense. As part of a mixed methods approach to my PhD research, I kept a free writing journal while working at a HIV and AIDS development agency in PNG. In this talk I reflect on how this method informed my argument that emotions are integral in both reproducing and resisting Orientalisms, in a development setting. In doing so I will reflect (briefly) on: 

What this method reveals about the emotive nature of HIV and AIDS development work in PNG.
How the free writing method complemented semi-structured interview data for exploring the emotionality of place.
The practical and emotionally problematic aspects of employing free writing data in research papers.