Session Sharing

Building confidence by allowing writers the option to read their work aloud as a chance to get over the mental blocks of seeking perfection and to boost self-esteem through the support of other writers.

About The IWN Workshop

As writers ourselves, we understand writing is about the harmony between having the time, finding the inspiration, and getting in the zone–about being in a creative mindset. These three things, if unaligned, create a torturous feeling. A feeling we label writer’s block. A feeling avoided with any excuse, any possibility of any activity other than writing. It's a feeling plaguing professionals from all backgrounds tasked with expressing ideas in written communication.

In the Ideas Write Now workshop, we tackle this tough feeling of writer’s block, by ensuring the experience of writing is exciting and the time for writing is carved into a schedule. We create a no-risk environment, no grades, no critique, no expectation beyond a few written ideas. Our 60min workshop is an on-the-spot collaborative writing experience where our success comes from collaboration as inspiration, endurance writing as a way to build long-form writing skills, and session sharing to build confidence in our independent voices. 

Participants are led through compounding writing activities that transition them from the everyday environment into the writing mindset. Each workshop begins with activities to draw participants into the writing space using creative lists, brain dumps, journal entries, haikus, etc. Lastly, writers are challenged to answer a prompt in a 15 mins endurance writing session. We know as writers a draft is, by default, messy, yet we still torture ourselves to do it right the first time. Our workshop, instead, enables writers to write first and edit later. Or not to edit at all. We encourage writers to ignore grammatical edits and criticism and strive for pen-to-paper-scribbling-so-fast-you-can-hardly-read-the-words type of writing.

We stick to 15mins because the constraints of time eliminate the expectation of perfection. When writers remove the barrier of perfection, remove the fear of writing something incorrectly, and aim for a goal of time instead, then the need for perfection is replaced with the satisfaction of having created. Having filled a blank page. In this way, we can ease out of the fear of writer’s block.

Uniquely, our workshop utilizes in-person collaboration as a way for writers to practice their skills in writing. The more we as humans can allow the space for experience to be interpreted, the easier it becomes to transcribe those experiences into words. Even further, when these initial messy and authentic ideas are shared aloud in the workshop after endurance writing, participants have reported a greater sense of confidence in their skills as storytellers and effective communicators. Our workshop helps writers sharpen their skills of endurance writing to make future writing tasks less dreadful while incorporating practical techniques to help writers find the creative zone. 

If you are looking for accountability in your writing practice, searching for a community of spontaneous storytellers, or in need of an exciting way to overcome your dread of writing, our workshop is perfect for you. 

Because of COVID-19, we now meet online. You can find the upcoming schedule for our monthly IWN workshops linked below.