Ryan 1. Experiment With Yourself And Others

Mmm choc-avocado cake; sounds strangely delightful.

I think it is this strangeness Kat talks about that so interests people and is part of the reason why, over a year on, we are all still devouring as much Willow Pattern as we can get our hands on. Artists have always been a strange folk, that’s their appeal. I know I would rather have been a fly on the wall during the 24 hours the book was written in than sit in on the senate, thank you very much.

The collaboration of a group of artists, vagabonds and junkies the lot of them, is always an entertaining experiment: muses whispering, ideas flashing, egos crashing; the work of art at the end is just a bonus. Sure it follows a similar process as a single artist’s subjective chaos but here you see it acted out with more players, more variables. Think of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the film documenting a group of artists in the jungle undergoing the process of creating a masterpiece, one of the most celebrated documentaries in history. Can you imagine anyone wanting to watch an hour and a half film of Joseph Conrad sitting alone penning the inspiring novella.

It is the focus that collaboration throws upon the creative process, sometimes forgotten in awe of the product, which is so important. It was to investigate this connection that another group of writers and literary teachers from around the world began meeting in a digital space in order to better help their students with a focus on writing as a process, not a product.

And if collaboration, as it turns out, is good for the writing process then boy do we have some more in store for you because the pattern is growing. It was Simon Groth who mentioned the idea of making things “interactive”, more involving for everyone. COL-LAB-OR-ATE.

Natheless we took it on board. Kirsty’s interactive idea to get things rolling was to adopt another activity with as an impressionable time constraint as the Willow Pattern team underwent, like those Rubik’s Cubes, but no. Cooking a meal in just a few minutes, too reality TV. It would have to be something literary, and that had me thinking of another writing collective fond of puzzles and self-imposed constraints – the Oulipo, the French Workshop for Potential Literature. These guys loved to make things difficult for themselves. The traditional restrictions of the sonnet and rondeau were not enough, but perhaps if they had installed a time constraint too…

So the challenge is this: a haiku in one minute.

We all know the little Japanese gems but for a revision we have: in English, 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables; a seasonal reference; and most importantly a juxtaposition of two images, generally marked by a cut or pause, a link between the two, at the end of one of the lines.

The sun blazes down
Into the sea the ice melts -
Life is born again.

Nothing special but I guess that’s why the Oulipo were more creative in restricting themselves to create a potentiality. If it’s too easy you can always try a haiku lipogram – omitting a single letter such as ‘e’, the most common, from your poem. Georges Perec was able to write a beautifully enigmatic novel under this constraint and he spent most of his last remaining days at UQ, so I’m sure you’ll do fine.

Kat 1. Do You Play Well With Others?

For me, group work rates equal to choc-avocado cake in terms of strangeness. If you’re friends with other people in the group, or most of you are committed to the goals at hand, fine, but when it comes to educational projects, many groups seem painfully reminiscent of Christopher Currie’s students in Uninterrupted Study. Who hasn’t ever staggered away feeling wounded, underappreciated, and vaguely bitter? It’s a scarily common post-group malaise.

Writers can also be pretty bad about group work. There’s mistrust in the eyes of writing students when they’re paired up, as though we’re all just waiting to have our beloved ideas stolen away. Fiction writers are loners, thank you muchly, and we’ll leave the Kumbaya singing hug-ins to the script writers of the world.

And yet, here I am. In a group.

Reading Willow Pattern made me want to sit the authors down and ask them how on earth they managed it. How did nine writers, each with their own style, ideas, and quirks create a work in 24 hours? How did they make it so good? Ok, sure, they’re pros. These aren’t exactly 9 people who’ve never tried to write before. But surely there’s something more than ‘be a professional’ that we can take from this?

I can rattle off the social and educational psychology answers to why it worked, but they’re rather dull. Partin says that you need common goals, rewards, and interdependence. In Tannenbaum, Lewin explains that we are social beings who don’t like to stray far from our groups- groups work because they play to social needs. By all accounts, groups should be consistently wonderful ways of creating, but we all have horror stories that disprove that idea quite soundly.

In high school, and very rarely university, it feels a lot like being told to go and work with that guy eating the glue. In Willow Pattern, though, it’s a gathering of like-minded sorts. It’s not a blind panic over grades; it’s a bunch of talented sorts testing the boundaries of what they can physically achieve, and disintegrating those boundaries with over-strong coffee and Coke™. Maybe the idea of group work is less about the in-your-pocket style of work we get used to in school. Maybe the best example of group work in Willow Pattern comes not from Currie’s university students, or even the writers in their metafictional cameo, but from the four Tibetan Monks in P.M. Newton’s Mandala. The world around them is going awry, but still they sit, meditatively going about their tasks. No muss, no fuss, no stress: each individual was focused on their own work rather than wondering if the others were doing enough. Each had faith in the abilities of those around them. There’s no questioning of motives- just blind trust that the three Monks with them are giving their all to the project. As an image of group work, I have to admit I like it.

In Willow Pattern, there were many more group members than the nine authors who participated. From the QWC staff, to the Twitter™ follower who delivered Coke™ to an author, the group radiated outwards. In a way, the group was a mandala; starting off small, but stretching and growing far beyond the confines of what a pile of sand should be. Each member, no matter how trivial their role, added to the overall structure, and the image created in often subtle but always meaningful ways. Even now, over a year after the end of the 24 hours, more colours and patterns are being added. Not
all groups get such good mileage from an idea, granted, but for the rest of the year, we’re going to learn as much as we can about how to stretch ourselves creatively.

Feel free, of course, to join in. I for one would love to know what people have learned from group work, or how much coffee you think it’d take to write a story and get it published in a day. My guess: I’d need 18 mochas and someone to slap me whenever I stopped working.

For the industrious among you, those psychology ideas are courtesy of ‘Classroom Teacher’s Survival Guide’ by Ronald L. Partin (2005, Jossey-Bass Publishing), and ‘Social Psychology of the Work Organisation’ by Arnold Tannenbaum (2013 Taylor and Francis Publishing)

Lauren 1. Time To Redefine "Book"

As someone who has loved books since childhood, it's interesting to wonder what the meaning of "book" could develop into when everything these days is becoming so digital. I've done a few projects while at university that have considered the question and there are already a few different answers. A lot of writers these days are collaborating not just with other writers, but with their fans, software developers, graphic designers, and any other creative minds able to make their works more encompassing of an electronic audience. Writers are now asking "How else can I tell the story?"

With that in mind, The 24-Hour Book was just another answer to that question. Not only that, its open involvement with the public made those 24-hours an event; there was just as much interest in the writing challenge as the written works themselves. What I want to get from remixing Willow Patterns is not to form new stories from the original text, but to express the complexity of forming a story and how the smallest artistic media can create a huge impact.

An interesting discussion on creative writing as practice-led research presented by Lelia Green proposed that a piece of fiction may be judged better than another simply because it is published. If Willow Patterns remained unpublished, would that have made it any less impressionable? Of course not. The effort of nine authors writing a large piece of fiction in just 24-hours is an accomplishment at any rate..

Being a person who is passionate about many creative art forms, it's important to consider the multitude of elements that make up the final product. Hours spent planning and preparing, ensuring all the variables are controlled, the intense concentration, collaboration and sometimes perfectionism that can suck a person into something that could be passed off by someone with a simple "Meh". So many times I've poured hours of intense focus into an artwork or written piece to then step back and realise that a piece of my soul is stuck to that work. And whether or not others like or dislike my creations is not always my desire. Sometimes I simply want to create to challenge myself. To stretch the boundaries of my skills.

And that's how I'm going to start remixing the idea of the "book". 

Kirsty 1. The Remixed Group

This is the first in my series of blog entries regarding Willow Pattern: The 24-Hour Book Remixed project. If you’ve skimmed through the page and the previous blogs uploaded, you should by now get the gist that we, a group of 8 QUT students, under the supervision of our very talented mentor Dr. Sam Burch, are creatively responding to a book that was written and published all within 24 hours.

Let me start by saying that when I read the proposal to join this endeavour, I was thrilled. I mean, what a creative and innovative idea to collaborate and publish a book in 24 hours. My second thought was: these people must be crazy, and therefore I must delve into their minds and discover what prompted them to do this. This thought process worked out extremely well after we had met up with Simon Groth, one of the talented authors of the Willow Patterns book who works for the Queensland Writers Centre. He explained to us that his vision for the project, and for the future of the 24-Hour Book, was to explore the entire creative process of making the book, rather than just the final product. This left me feeling even more thrilled as I was, and am, so excited to explore the who, what, when, where and how of the creative process. If you’re wondering what I mean by the creative process, head on over to my fellow group member Emily’s blog post, and have a read of her explanation, and her interesting thoughts on it.

Specific to the 24-hour book, we are interested in studying and creatively responding to the data involved with getting the book published. Each individual authors process during the 24-hours can be watched, right down to every time they clicked save, every backspace and every time they pasted in a new wall of text. Our group is excited to see how we can take this information and ‘remix’ it. That is, display it in a creative way that will really get audiences thinking about the whole ordeal of getting this amazing book published.

As for my ideas on how to creatively respond to the process, my imagination is working rapidly and I’m excited to see what will come from it. My fellow group members and I are meeting this week to pool our creativity and hone down to some interesting creative responses. I encourage you to watch this space and follow us along on our journey, because I can see the finished project/s being something special. Our fresh, creative minds are working together tirelessly to do justice to the wonder that is Willow Pattern: The 24-HourBbook, and I know we will not disappoint.

Emily 1. Collaborative Fuel

At the start of this semester, myself and seven other students embarked on the creative project: Willow Patterns - The 24-Hour Book Remixed, which aims to change and explore the traditional notion of the 'book'. This project is done in collaboration with the Queensland Writers Centre and aims to examine how a story can be presented, not only within the traditional written format but also within the creative process itself.

Over the next few months, each student is asked to reflect on the progress being made within this project and upload it for others to read and consider. At this early stage, we as a group are still brainstorming what outcomes we want for the process and how exactly we can better illustrate and demonstrate the 'creative process' to a wider audience. Thus this blog will focus on my initial reaction and understanding of the concept: the creative process.

Initially I felt a little confused about how to explore and present the 'creative process' in a more tangible format (stories, poetry etc). This was mainly because 'creative process' is such a broad term, and initially I was unsure of what it meant within this particular context. When I started working on the first assessment, which was to outline our initial plans for the project, my confusion over what the creative process actually meant made it difficult to then formulate concrete plans on how to express it.

To solve problems like this in the past, I have always found knowledge to be the best solution: to find out more about the subject, to do more research etc.

In this circumstance I did the same thing, conducting research, in order to alleviate my confusion. When reading, I came across a journal article by musician Patricia Plude, who stated that the creative process put simply, was the entire journey from the birth of an idea, to the finished product; where the creation is first heard, viewed and experienced by others and takes on a life of its own (2000). This process is profoundly unique to the individual, some stall at the re-modelling stage, while others struggle to get their preliminary ideas off the ground. Plude also emphasised the importance of sharing these experiences with fellow creative practitioners as it is often through collaboration with others, that can fuel and re-ignite the creative process in others. Sharing the process through a public platform also allows for greater understanding and appreciation of what each individual goes through to 'create', and so the final product automatically gains more value (2000).

This research relates to the Willow Patterns project as it suggests that by sharing the creative process of The 24-Hour Book (all the re-writes, saves etc) in a public setting, we can encourage collaboration with the greater public, which could make the creative process ongoing, due to the further stimulation it provides. Furthermore, by sharing and expressing the creative process we can potentially increase the value of Willow Patterns and its creators.

This research has given me a better understanding of the creative process and what is expected of us when representing it. I am now ready to effectively brainstorm with the group on ways to express it.

Plude, P. (2000). Supporting the creative process. The American Music Teacher, 49(4), 88. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/217459900?accountid=13380   

Following The Pattern

It's been just over a year since the 24-Hour Book was created by 9 writers and there are still so many things that can be done. The stories that unfolded in Willow Patterns came together through the authors collaboration during an intense time period, and it's not just the stories that are worth examining. The creative process of writing a book, the teamwork and editing it takes to produce a polished piece, as well as the pressure of a time limit are all just parts of the story.

The purpose of this project is to further explore the possibilities of stories as data. From its original inception as a ‘book’ (both print and digital), our goal is to explode the 24-Hour Book into a myriad of forms and responses both digital and physical and to create an experience that will inspire visitors to step outside of ‘the book’ and consider the future of how everyone can engage with stories on their own terms.

Over the coming months Remixed will be delving into the possibilities that can come from the creation of a book. The physical, digital and intangible elements behind the Willow Patterns creation will be examined, and re-imagined from new perspectives with the goal of creating entirely knew pieces. The project also presents an opportunity for the public to engage with the writers and other members of the writing community by responding to their work. The possibilities are limitless and Remixed will begin to explore them.