Writers’ Asylum: Post-mortem

 

The Writers Asylum may be crazy, but let’s keep an open mind about it anyway.

The Writers’ Asylum has been and gone. I’m still recovering – how about you?

It was a wonderful day. It got off to a rushed start for me, mostly due to traffic, but I got there in time and was sitting down and set up with five minutes to spare. Just enough time to chat to those who were there, ready for the kick-off.

There were a handful of people sitting in the in-person event by the time 10:30 rolled around – five or six of us. They got to hear my halting intro, which was an approximation of the prologue post that went up here on the blog. (Public speaking has never been my forte, but I think I managed to not make a tit of myself.) The intro was much quicker than I had anticipated, which left us with twenty-five minutes to order coffee and get distracted by random conversations.

It’s okay, I had my phone set up to warn me when the challenge time was getting close, with a variety of loud, annoying noises.

I was more worried about the turnout, though. Six people is nice, but it’s not much for an event that took me weeks to organise. I knew of a couple of people were taking part online (and there may have been more, stealthily stalking the challenge posts), however, I had hoped for a decent amount of obvious interest in the Asylum. I’d had so many people say that they loved the idea and couldn’t wait to do it, and many drop out at the last minute, so I was preparing myself for disappointment.

Luckily, that last bit wasn’t necessary. By the time 11:00am rolled around and the first challenge was rising up, there were a solid dozen people at the table. By the end of the first challenge, there were sixteen people spread over two big tables, all typing away. A bunch of that number were new faces, which was awesome (I always love it when I get to meet new people who love writing!). So, in the end, a great turnout.

The day went pretty much like clockwork. I dropped everyone into the deep end with a sexy challenge up first, and drove them through emotional turmoil for the rest of the day. Ahahahaha.

I was unsure about the goal of 1,000 words, but people seemed to hit it fairly comfortably within the hour. We had time to order food and other stimulating refreshments, and it all ticked over as I had hoped it would.

Score for me!

What I found really interesting was how different the atmosphere was compared to our usual write-ins. We were sitting in the same place, at the same time, in roughly the same setup as we usually did, but the Asylum wasn’t the casual ‘get together with writers who sometimes write and hey look at this cool thing I found on the internet and ooo let’s talk about ’ that usually happens. Once I’d done giving the challenge (I read out the prompts that went up here on the blog), a busy silence fell on the table. Keys whispered and clicked. Comments and questions were few and far between. The hush was infectious.

It was a long day, and we were all pretty wrung out by the end of it. Six challenges is a lot, and I saved the hardest for last (comedy is reported to be the hardest to write, after all). I got lots of feedback at the end, which was wonderful, and most of it positive. Seems like everyone who came would love to do it again. (One person asked me if I did this every month. I laughed and restrained myself from saying ‘HELL NO are you insane?’. I am, however, grateful to know that people enjoyed it and want more!)

Overall, I think it was a success and I’m delighted. This was an experiment for me, and I’m so happy that it worked out. But we can’t leave it there! Now I need to know more.

These are my thoughts about the day, but what I’d really like is more from the participants. Will you help me make another Asylum happen? To do that, I’d like to know:

What did you think of the day?
What did you think of the goal of 1,000 words?
Was 6 challenges too much? What would be an ideal number for a single day for you? (I’ve had ’4 with a lunch break’ suggested, but am open to options.)
What did you think of the prompts? Were they specific enough? Too specific?
Did you write something unexpected?
Which challenge was hardest for you?
Which challenge did you find the easiest?
Which challenge was your favourite?
This Asylum was intended to be across a broad range of topics, styles, and genres. Should it always be broad, or would ‘themed’ Asylums be worth trying? What kinds of themes?
Any other suggestions?

All feedback gratefully received. If you prefer, feel free to email your thoughts to me, or just comment here on the blog.

Thanks so much to everyone who took part. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Onwards, to the next thing!