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1. What made you decide to be involved in the Willow Pattern project?
It was too good an opportunity to refuse. I’ve always been a fan of writing produced under restrictions/constraints, as it always creates something interesting!
2. Did you have any prior relationship with any of the other authors? Was this an additional factor to doing to the project?
I knew a good deal of the people working on the project (and if I hadn’t met them in person I’d talked to them on social media) so it was a deciding factor for sure.
3. Do you find working towards a deadline stifled your creativity or enhanced it?
A bit of both I guess. As I said, I’m interested in writing produced under special conditions, and I think in this case it produced writing that perhaps we wouldn’t have done otherwise.
4. Why was the symbol ‘Willow Patterns’ chosen as the link within the book – what is the significance there?
It’s a little hazy, but we were trying to come up with themes, patterns and signifiers, and the idea of a “Willow Pattern” plate arose. I think choosing it as the title came after.
5. Did you have any ideas/plans on what to do coming into the project? Were there meetings beforehand?
We didn’t meet beforehand, and while it was clear some of the writers had come with plans/outlines for their writing, I came with nothing! I wanted my writing to be truly spontaneous.
6. Did you have a breaking point at all during the project – if so – at what point roughly during the 24 hours was this? What did you do to combat this?
I’m not sure I had a “breaking point” per se. I wrote straight into Wordpress, so I took mini-breaks to save my work and check Twitter, where we had a hashtag going.
7. Could you run through the initial hours of the project for us – did you have a meeting before writing or did you all just start?
From memory, we had a brief meeting to discuss what ideas everyone had, and where each piece would fit in a rough timeline. Some writers had strong ideas of where and when their piece would be set, but I was happy to fill in any gaps. We then got down to writing for a few hours and then reconvened to see where and if our stories could start to intersect in any way.
8. How did you all communicate with each other during the project and ensure synergy with each entry?
We had whiteboards up where we put ideas, characters etc. The idea of a Librarian as a central character came early on, as did the concept of “The Flood”. Apart from a few set meetings, we were free to work as we liked. The majority of us stayed around a boardroom table, while others worked at other places in the library or the QWC office.
9. What was your inspiration behind your chapter ‘Uninterrupted Study’?
As with much of my writing, I just started writing. I had a vague idea of the two other pieces my section was bridging, but apart from that I had a setting and a couple of characters talking. I tied in the idea of “The Flood” with the main character having never seen the ocean. Apart from that, it was my stock in trade: a coming-of-age story, albeit set during something of a crisis. I tied in the radio competition from Nick Earls’ story, details like the Tibetan horns from P.M. Newton’s story etc. It verged into some fantastical detail towards the end, which surprised me, but I went with it.
10. A couple of years back you set a challenge on your blog Furious Horses to write a new short story everyday between March 2008 and March 2009. In your experience with doing that previous project and the deadlines you faced, did you find your approach to how you wrote your chapter for Willow Pattern easier? Or was it still quite a challenge?
Yes, so again I really enjoyed the various limitations set by Furious Horses, especially a month of stories based on suggestions/restrictions curated by literary journal The Lifted Brow, where past contributors set me a challenge each day. That said, these challenges only resulted in a short story, not a 5000 word piece of writing.
11. Were there any memorable moments from the project you would like to share?
I think my favourite moment was when I tweeted that I would like a Coke Zero and the now-head of the QWC, Meg Vann, brought me one! The power of social media.
12. Would you ever do something like this again?
Absolutely!
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