How we wrote ‘A Book in A Day’ for charity.
Well, we did it. We wrote a book in a day. The challenge was totally worth it!
Our team of ten, from the Northern Beaches Writers Group, included six writers, two illustrators, layout and support. Our story reached over 10,000 words. The experience of working as a team against a production deadline was fantastic.
The day began when we took over an empty office early on Saturday morning and set up our gear. Then, we waited until 8am for our email to arrive, with our characters and subject matter.
We were assigned:
characters: a sculptor, a cleaner and a dinosaur;
a setting: a pub;
an issue: ‘over the rainbow’.
Needless to say, none of these were anything any of us could have imagined in advance.
The entire team immediately sprang into action, plotting as a group. Ideas came from all directions. With only an hour and a half to come up with a cohesive plot and characters, we had to accept ideas fast, hammer them into rough shape, and develop and define our direction. Zena Shapter, our organiser, filled a whiteboard, then several sticky poster sized sheets of paper. We filled in finer details and connections as fast as we could, with a cohesive beginning, middle and end, then assigned the six writers their chapters.
Our plotting took us an hour longer than we’d planned, so we were racing the clock. Intense concentration filled the next two hours, and the only sound was typing. Everyone displayed incredible focus as they turned their rough outlines into story or produced illustrations of key elements.
Then, while we came up for air and ate lunch (homemade lasagne generously contributed by one of the team), we listened to the first reading of our story.
Amazing. There really was a story!
Of course, it needed refining, and again, once the reading was complete, comments flew thick and fast on each chapter, and each author took notes about logic, discrepancies, redundancies and things we needed to add. The illustrators honed their plans for specific pictures.
Heads down again, as the next round of furious writing began – ‘extreme editing’. Once we writers finished our changes, those of us assigned overall editing tasks began fixing grammar, point-of-view or tense discrepancies, or tried to ensure the characters and story had consistent voices (a challenge with six different writers of different genres), or proof read for any other inconsistency or omission.
At the same time, the chapters were cleverly combined in a single document, illustrations assigned places, and promotional blurbs composed. We were still editing but we had to make the decision to print regardless. Adrenaline was at a high.
At 8pm we sent the email with our book to the Write-A-Book-In-A-Day Competition. I think our brains were all fried.
I don’t know about the rest of the team, but my mind replayed parts of the day and the story all night long. The challenge was intense – and I’d definitely do it again. Already, today, I can think of one or two things I’d add to enhance the part I wrote, but that’s part of the challenge of writing a book in a day. It won’t be perfectly polished; there’ll be things you’d still like to hone. But regardless, reading over the finished, illustrated story, it’s there, and it’s strong. An amazing accomplishment from such a varied team, in such a short space of time.
If you write, and you ever get the chance to participate in such a thing with a bunch of talented people–jump at it.
Our fund raising efforts are going well – thank you to all our incredibly generous sponsors! All money raised goes to Kid’s Cancer Research at Westmead Children’s Hospital. There’s still time to sponsor us if you wish – read how in my previous post.
