Amanda over at one of my favorite blogs, The Sarcastic Muse, threw down a gauntlet yesterday, basically saying: Don’t toss your gibberish in the trash. Keep it. Review it the next day and perhaps, surprise surprise, it will – like an oyster – reveal a pearl. (see below for instructions)
As you guys have probably guessed, this is exactly the kind of challenge I find impossible to resist. So here’s my gibberish notebook. It doesn’t have lines because I believe a gibberish notebook should have doodles and I don’t doodle well between the lines:
As you can see, my debut effort resulted in a battle with my stomach which I clearly lost. But undeterred I will try again tomorrow or perhaps I’ll try to make sense of the above gibberish or perhaps I’ll just doodle some more!
Instructions stolen from the Sarcastic Muse:
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Get into your “happy writer zen” mode.
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Grab your favorite writing tool and some blank or lined paper.
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Just write– write whatever pops into your head.
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Now the important step: PUT NO THOUGHT INTO WHAT YOU ARE WRITING.
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Allow your stream of consciousness unconsciousness to flow uninhibited across the page(s).
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Once the brain dump is complete, do a quick read through.
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Make a screwed up face.
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Say out loud “What the heck is that about?” (or just laugh out loud as though you are about to be committed).
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Put away what you have just written and don’t look at it.
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Once 24 hours has passed, put on your writer’s hat.
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Pull out the written gibberish from the day before.
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Read and dissect what you wrote.
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Start to glean little treasures from what you have journaled.
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If you can’t pull anything coherent from the gibberish, follow steps 10-13 again until something viable comes to light (this may take several tries).
Want to join me? Oh, do say yes!
Saying nothing in particular 
I love this! Laughed out loud. Cheers to Amanda/The Sarcastic Muse, and to you for showing us your first take.
Thanks! Now comes the challenge of making sense of it!
Yup – mine would probably be filled with food references too. That and really bad lyrics from kid show theme songs.
I sat down to brain dump this morning and every word on the paper started with a “b”! I guess it’s a b-kinda day!
How on earth do I seperate the gibberish from everything else I write??
Whatever you write, it’s always lovely.
Jan, you’re just excellent 😀
Jan, I think I’ll give this a try, but I wonder how many think I’m already writing gibberish. 😀
I love that floating baby head.
Your notebook looks like mine. I am a world class doodler! 😀
Jan, your gibberish is so artistic and cool! Mine would just be a lot of self doubt and anxiety. The project sounds valuable, though. I’d love to try it after I get through this round of revisions on my manuscript.
The element of play and spontaneity is so important to the writing process, though I’m the first to admit I tend to make my process as painful as possible. I wrote a poem in longhand last week and it opened up so many connections that just don’t happen when typing. I once did a creative writing journal with one of my advanced students where we shared writing prompts but also pasted in images, etc. It was very inspirational.
what a grand idea; this one I may try