“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Alice in Wonderland
I am mentally drained, and I can’t quite believe it, but I now have 30,000 words with which to play with.
I allowed myself to walk into this unfamiliar process with an open mind. I had decided that I would not take my finished crime-novel manuscript (Undercurrent) into the writing room with me. What I would do was write freely about my characters and the scenarios they were in, just to see what happened…
Hmm:
- Someone died (who I wasn’t planning to kill off).
- My main character, Cattis Cull, was accused of something by a colleague and had to be stood down, pending an internal investigation.
- And someone turned out to be gay…
Of course, I won’t be using a lot of what I’ve written (or perhaps I will – who knows?), but I cannot tell you how valuable it is to simply sit and write very fast, without over-thinking what you are doing.
Rachel Edwards, editor of Islet Magazine, was an excellent team leader, and hopefully we’ll be doing this again soon.
If you’re interested, here’s another post about the weekend, from one of the Melbourne Rabbit Holers, Little Girl With A Big Pen…
