Lauren 2. Enough Recollection, Time For Creation

As someone who writes and maintains their own blog, I can understand the difficulty of getting creative. Many authors, writers, painters, creators and other creative people like to discuss how they get into a creative mood; or how it gets into them. Because for me, it is one hell of a challenge.

In one specific journal piece written by Paulus and Dzindolet (2008) there is an interesting discussion on the comparison between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  I agree that during the first creative stages, intrinsic motivation can be the most important. Whenever I go to write something, whether it be a blog post, a short story, or a review, I need to have a personal reason for doing it. Something that's interesting or compelling I want to express, or I have an urge to get a head start on a particular topic.

Now compare this to a challenge set to write a book in 24-hours. At first there is that intrinsic motivation to complete the task or to see what kind of story can be produced in a short, intense period of time. But what happens after the 16th hour when your exhaustion starts to set in and what was initially motivating you has now been washed away with four shots of espresso and two packets of TimTams. That's when the extrinsic motivators help.

Being in a room of other people under the same pressure pushes you further. I know I would be a lot more productive if I had other people around me either pushing me to finish my project or at least suffering under the same terror as I. There is also that looming fear of failure for not getting it completed in time, and while the extrinsic influences may cause a stifling to the original creativity coming from the intrinsic ones, you need those external forces to push you over the finish line.

With that in mind, it's time for us to start putting our ideas for Remixed into the grinder to see what comes out.

For me, I'm fascinated with the number of words used in the book. if:Books kindly provides a spread sheet presenting all the words included in either the chapters or the book, and when you start to think about it, the words themselves mean nothing.

Take for example this image I made:

"The" is used 3237 times throughout the book. It's such a simple word and when you see it repeated so many times like in the image above it begins to lose meaning. But without it the book would not have the same meaning. And without the word I wouldn't have been able to make this image that depicts both the beauty of typeface and the integration of words as art.

I also want to try expressing the difficulty of forcing your brain to function at odd hours, just like the chart shows:

To me it displays a good example of the first initial intrinsic motivation with a big spike of extrinsic in the last few hours. The only question is, what other ways can we display it?

Maddy 2. The Creative Process And Our Favourite Chapters

My second blog entry I based upon reflection of the Willow Patterns 24 hour book and how actually the whole thing/process/book made me feel. I feel like expressing how I actually felt about the chapters and some of the content that was written by each of the authors. First of all I loved how the stories were all small chapters and every time you finished reading one you knew that there was going to be something completely different to follow. It wasn’t just an ordinary novel that is more times than not based on that one single story; where chapter after chapter the story would evolve around the content and you would find out more and learn more as the chapters go on. Willow Patterns was just a completely different angle with new beginnings each chapter every single time. Yes, the story was based around certain features and topics for the writers to include but I found that each and every author’s version one was so different and cleverly written, so distinctive from the next!

I must admit, not all of them tickled my fancy and I even thought in my opinion some may of gone a bit too far with the imagination, extending into almost erotica content! But then again this is a university subject, we are not little children anymore and the authors are incredibly talented and good at what they do; they had no restrictions on writing and were free to do and act as they wished. My comments about them being quite full-on and confronting is probably quite an uneducated comment in the writing world on which I really know nothing much about. I am not prudish either so it just must be my lack of experience with writers and how far their imaginations can go.

Gilkey (2008) explains 4 parts of creativity. This is the creative process and its 4 distinctive parts.

1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Implementation

A writer, for example Gilkey (2008), explains preparation as writing, reading or revising earlier work. This process is necessary to plant the seed that leads to the 2nd process. These authors on the project for Willow Patterns, prepared beforehand by thinking about the assignment that was put before them and planning what they may write about. I feel that they would have had little time to prepare, the real preparation was knowing about the project and that literally once they entered the State library they had only that 24-hours to create something great.

Incubate is the process for the writers to work on their ideas, and develop a story. They were not distracted by the busy outside world, rather in their own world working at a fast pace.
Illumination I think would have been when these writers established a story, established their ideas and they began writing so furiously trying to get all those ideas in their head on to paper (or The Wall).

I think we all know what that implementation process entailed for the writers. This is when their work was created, published, out on the shelves, and online for the public to see. Their work, which was done in a hectic 24 hours, was now complete. I guess this would of been the proudest moment for them on this one particular project as I’m sure all writers consider their work to be a proud moment to commemorate.

I’ll mention briefly a couple of my favourites. There were 2 chapters that I fancied quite a bit, chapter 5 ‘A strange Way to Catch Barramundi’ by Geoff Lemon. I enjoyed how it was a change from the usual Library scene where everything happened there. It was still revolving around the major floods but it was a complicated story about 2 brothers and a wife, the wife became trapped for days upon the flooding and had gone missing. One of the brothers was married to her while the other had been in love with her for years. It was a complicated web of love and after the wife was found she could not fully regain herself, which was awful in the end, but I am a sucker for love stories, whether they are sad or not!

I also enjoyed chapter 7 ‘Uninterrupted Study’ by Christopher Currie. It was just humorous to read a chapter about classic uni students stuck in a group, not knowing who each other are and trying to get a whole assignment written in one day. Everyone has different personalities, has places they wanted to be, are different in their perspectives of work ethic and it was quite easy to relate to being a uni student myself!

What was yours? Can anyone share with me their experiences with the book and how it made them feel? I would be quite interested to know, I bet there are a few different answers!

Kirsty 2. It's Kind Of Fun To Do The Impossible

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney

Bar graphs. Scatter plots. Pie charts (mmm pie).

Aside from the word pie, none of these mathematical terms resonate with me very well. But yet I am being thrown in the deep end of analysing them, and more ways completely foreign to my creative brain of presenting the data of the 24-Hour Book.

We are progressively sifting through the data available and let me just tell you it is overwhelming! It’s like looking at that delicious recipe in your favorite cook book but being too afraid to cook it because it has too many ingredients and complex procedures, so you end up going to a restaurant and leaving it up to the professionals. We are attempting to be those professional chefs and bring you that delicious pie. The problem is, we’re not professionals, but I guess that’s the fun of the game.

I also feel we can’t complain going into the amazing, overwhelming world of the data when the 9 authors had to go in and actually produce a book in 24 hours! In the theme of cooking this prompts me to think of certain baking tasks that would be seemingly impossible to achieve in a refined timeframe. Or is Willow Pattern an indicator that nothing is impossible? Audrey Hepburn did say, “nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!

So, I am calling all you bakers out there to attempt to find a way to bake a cake in 24 minutes. I mean a proper cake too, not just soggy batter that’s started to crust around the edges. If I get plausible comments below of your creative recipes to make a cake in 24 minutes, I’ll try them out and post up my results.

I look forward to the challenge and the results (seeing them and eating them!)… do you? 

Disney, Walt. 2011. 1001 Inspirational Quotes. Austin: Garden State Publishing.
Hepburn, Audrey. 2005. How to be lovely: The Audrey Hepburn way of life. USA: Penguin Group.

Emily 2. The Art Of Questioning

Currently my team members and I have now fully grasped the concepts and objectives for the Willow Patterns remixed project and are well under way to achieving these objectives.

We have completed our first task successfully, which was partly due to the consistent communication between group members on Facebook. Everyone has made a commitment to reply to comments, to upload drafts for everyone to check over, and to provide positive feedback. This constant communication and collaboration has resulted in a more cohesive thought process, which is evident when reading through our finished task (our overview for our Willow project).

The next task am now focusing on, is preparing questions to ask the authors involved with Willow Patterns. These interviews are important as they will reveal information on the experiences of the 24 hour book project, which will provide us with further material and stimulus to use for our own project. Furthermore, uploading and sharing the interviews with all of the authors will be good for both the projects publicity and the Brisbane Writing Centres publicity, as these interviews would be of interest to the fans of these local Brisbane writers and avid readers in general, and thus encourage them to read and engage with our blog.

Considering this, I have been researching different interview styles and skills in order to prepare for my interviews. Bill Gilliam who wrote a book specifying in interviews for research purposes argues that the most important component of an interview is that the questions must be open. “Questions asked or topics raised must be open so that the interviewee is determining their own answers; doing this provides a truer representation of their thoughts as they are less inclined to say what they think the interviewer wants to hear” (Gillham, 2005).

Consequently, when constructing my initial questions, I tried to take this on board, leaving my questions open ended, so that each author were free to interpret and respond to the questions in any way they liked. For example “Why did you decide to become involved with Willow Patterns?”
Gillham also states that interviewing is a difficult mix of maintaining and following a structure (set questions) while simultaneously taking advantage of opportunities when they arise naturally during the interview (2005). I believe what he means by this is, although an interviewer should always have a clear idea of the questions they want to ask, they must also be prepared, that questions they hadn’t thought of originally, may arise through the natural course of conversation. This will be an important thing to keep in mind if I conduct my interviews in person, however if I conduct my interviews through email, I will miss the chance to ask any follow up questions or questions in relation to something the author says in conversation. This puts me at a slight disadvantage as there is the potential to miss out on added information. To try and solve this, my final question can be “Is there anything you would like to add?” which hopefully will encourage them to discuss anything not specifically mentioned in the questions.

Applying these tips to my interviews should hopefully allow me to engage with the interviewee in a way that will give me the best responses and maximise the amount of information I receive.

To finish, like my fellow colleagues before me I am posing a challenge to the readers of this blog. If there is one question you would ask any of the featured writers in Willow Patterns, if you got the chance....what would it be? Send the questions in on our blog, and we can ask them, on your behalf! (It must be noted, however that any distasteful and inappropriate questions will be removed immediately)

Des 1. Anxious Collaborators

T. S. Eliot says, “anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity,” and that is exactly what The Willow Pattern 24 hour book achieved. Let’s all admit it, writers are a different kind of breed and throwing nine successful writers into a room to write, create, edit and publish a book within 24 hours, well their anxiety would have definitely been sky-rocketing with caffeine induced shakes. I have always believed that deadlines stifle the creative process and that you have to be in the right place at the right time to write; as I usually write in the late hours of the night alone in my bedroom when my mind is buzzing right before I fall asleep. However, the writer’s involved in Willow Pattern have changed this belief I have held so close and I would like to shake each one of the their hands.

The thought of collaborative writing, bouncing ideas off each other and meshing stories to create one final product is what Willow Pattern achieved, but at the end of the day it is not just about the final product, it's about the creative process and everything that came to be the Willow Pattern 24 hour book. The countless creating, editing, cutting, word counting, changing of the writer’s works plays a huge part of what the book means today. A year on and Willow Pattern is still making a lasting impact by allowing other people to explore and add their two cents into the process through digital media. Sometimes it can be easy to dismiss the process and just focus on the product, however there are pages and pages of data on the process of how these nine writers, fingers fiercely typing, created this masterpiece. That is the beauty of writing. It is subjective. Each of us interprets and obtains different things out of it.

Now a group of university students, including myself are collaborating and working together to create different representations of the book. Although each of us in this group are diverse and comprise of different disciplines, we all have one thing in common. We all desperately wanted to be apart of the Willow Pattern project after reading the brief because it is one of the most innovative, original endeavors I have come across. We, as a group, have been brainstorming ideas and generating responses such as blog posts, poems, letters, interviews and data analysis to make the Willow Pattern project as interactive and collaborative as possible.

So, similar to Ryan’s Haiku challenge, I propose you to write a free verse poem. Free verse poetry does not require any rhyming schemes, but does tend to employ other types of creative language such as alliteration, assonance and repetition. Think of T. S Eliot’s poems. However, there is one rule. You have to include a title of any of the nine chapters in the Willow Pattern book.

Maddy 1. Short-Distance Team Writing Experiment

My blog post today consists of my personal interest in writing as a collaborative process and how together 9 authors delivered something out of the ordinary with outstanding professional conduct under a 24 hour time limit. You would have read previously from blog posts below about the 24 hour process and what came about it – the book ‘Willow Patterns’. I have a very big interest in books, and to see what they have become and what they are capable of these days is so much more than I would have imagined for the future of writing. I can’t believe how technologically advanced we are these days and what endless possibilities seem to arise through simple group projects.

The 9 authors gathered at the State Library and began their work to write a book within 24 hours. The stories they were writing was posted online to allow readers to watch the story unfold and to submit ideas, suggestions, and contributions across all different media outlets. Simon Groth mentioned why a decision was made to write, edit, and publish a book in such a short time, explaining it as an ‘experiment', an exploration of how the digital process informs and influences collaborative writing and editing in a combination of face-to-face and screen-to-screen’ (Groth, 2012, p. 4). Collaboration is one of the major words that have come about from the 24-Hour project. It is because without constant collaboration between these authors, face to face and online with readers, this book would not have come about. By constantly uploading versions of their stories online, the authors allowed people within the community to make suggestions, comments, and assist in the process themselves. 

Collaboration for this project went much wider when it stopped being just author to author; instead it became face-to-face and screen-to-screen, author to author, author to editor, and book to audience.

Collaboration was one of the main concepts for this project. Collaborative writing is not huge in narrative fiction, with only a few books being written by more than one writer, and barely more than three authors. To prove that writers do love working together and bouncing ideas off each other, they met physically in one place, constantly discussing their stories and the progress they were making despite the pressure of the 24 hour time frame.

It must have been quite easy for all the writers to participate in this project as they are passionate about the same thing: writing; being in that room full of  knowledgeable, smart, and creative people would have been an interesting and unique encounter. According to Mclaughlin (2013) there are 7 traits associated with remarkable writers, and I must admit I am envious:

1. Diligence
2. Patience
3. Faithfulness
4. Learners
5. Givers
6. Readers
7. Purposeful story tellers

I envy the patience of writers, and how easily they read. I love reading and always have, but I haven’t picked up a book in months (excluding Willow Patterns) which leaves me a little disappointed in myself. I would blame a lack of free time or simply forgetfulness, but that just seems like a childish excuse. 

Spring, M (1997) offers a really interesting site which talks about the collaborative process and what it means to authors, specifically the 9 authors - (a bit of a dated article on collaborative writing, but I am sure the concept of collaboration in writing hasn’t changed much in the past few years). It appears the collaborative process of writing face-to-face, screen to screen, etc. was a successful collaborative process experiment. From reading this article, and from the response they received from the community, it is clear to me that these 9 talented authors achieved what they set out to do. They established a goal beyond the tangible using a collaborative effort, and divided writing tasks evenly between them. All were to write 1 chapter in 24 hours relating to a various outlay of topics that were given to them which included mentioning a librarian named Sammi Bernhoff, a beautiful vase, missing children, a looming disaster and radio shock jocks.

They communicated ideas verbally but also digitally on the event and involved a vast array of people to contribute to the writers’ ideas of their chapters and what they should include, and how they were going throughout the process as well. Effective communication is imperative and I think these writers got it right! The concept of delivering a book edited published and everything else in 24 hours is mind blowing, and they did it with the collaborative effort of 9 authors writing vigorously, editors spell-checking madly, and the watchful eye of the public to assist.

So if you haven't already, read the stories that were produced in such an amazing fashion. And maybe start to think of what you could do in under 24 hours that couldn't normally be done. What would you try and do?

India 1. The Discourse Of Collaborative Learning

I’m one of those writers that hide their work. I hold it so incredibly close to me that I feel guilty when telling friends “I’ll email you my piece tonight” when I’m secretly plotting how I’ll never show them a thing. The concept of writing without a plan for 24 hours straight, surrounded by eight talented authors makes my inner thighs sweat. Needless to say, as I read the project description for Willow Patterns, my right arm shot straight towards the ceiling, beaming “pick me!”.

Initially the intrigue was towards the nine authors of Willow Patterns and their creative process. I was fascinated by the brain of Simon Groth and wanted to know every thought process each writer had at every minute. The idea that creative collaboration invariably leads to productive work is one that has been challenged by current research (e.g. Vass, 2003), indicating that the benefits of paired creative writing are inextricably linked to the quality of collaboration as well as other contextual factors.

I wanted to explore these contextual factors and what exactly the researchers meant when describing “quality of collaboration”. Do you have to like the people you are collaborating with? Does your work need to be fundamentally coherent with theirs? What if you are opposites? How will it work? Well, it did! Nine writers. 24 hours. One book. In that time they managed to interweave stories, keep their own unique voice and make it all sound fantastic. They each displayed an impossible amount of critical thinking while remaining subjective and improvisational.

Now, we are a group of 8 students remixing the leftovers of a successful collaborative project. One usually cringes when hearing about a group assessment or collaborative project, mainly because of the large melting pot of ideas each student brings that never quite add up to anything intellectual. This project is teaching each of us how to collaborate creatively and consists mainly of three major processes: planning, translation (of data), and reviewing. It contains equal amounts of fusion between the productive and analytic phases. It incorporates two interlinking and interdependent processes, engagement – the generation of creative ideas; the emotional engagement with the material – and reflection – the conscious break of the chain of association; reviewing, contemplation and planning.

What we will walk away with and leave you to mull over is an idea of how the writing process is activated. Some attribute creativity to deliberate explorations and transformations in the mind. In contrast, others argue that low focus thinking – is the foundation of creativity, by which unique analogies are formulated as emotion surfaces and binds thoughts in the dream-like associative process. We could join these two arguments, and posits that the two types of thinking are both crucial to the writing process. They are combined by the mind's conscious effort to recreate an emotional experience, which prompts the composition of the written text. Perhaps I will learn to reveal some stories to you after all.