Inkshedding!

OMG! and/or EUREKA!

Every feel so super ecstatically pumped when you find something that you had no idea you had lost in the first place?

I took a course in the summer of my first year at Grant MacEwan. It was Creative Non-Fiction with Gigi Meade. I enjoyed in immensely, learned a ton and got to read some really cool books that I never finished but moving on...

I learned the art of Inkshedding! Omg. Just thinking about telling people about it makes me all excited. Ok, ok ok so, what you do is... write! But the catch is, you can't stop. Get a notebook, paper, whatever, put your pen to it, and just write write write! It's good to give yourself a topic, such as "What should I do today" or "What would my character do in this situation" or "What if that crazy cat lady was right and I should build a bomb shelter" or, simply, "What should I write about?"

That last one is the question I posed to myself the other day. Specifically what form of Non-Fiction to write (and you though I'd forgotten this assignment) and I started Inkshedding and remembered how so honestly freeing it is.

You see, the point of an Inkshed is to simply get the ideas down, regardless of grammar, spelling, correctness in any form; hidden agendas, hostile take over by writer's block, holding back. It's great to just write and write, and remember don't stop! Not to fix spelling, or put in commas or anything. Just keep going, even if you have nothing to say, or you lose your train of mind, just write, "I have nothing to say," or "I lost my train of thought" and never stop moving that pen!

Try it. Enjoy it. Let it free your mind to just think: All you're doing is recording it. You might surprise yourself.

One of the great things is rereading what you've written. Half of it, if not more, will be crap. I'm sorry. But the rest of it will be pure and polished gold ready to be molded into fine jewellery and beautiful things of the like.

Let me know how it goes!