The Little Black Book

My face to face writing group decided earlier this year to explore their creativity and one of the projects that's really captured my imagination is The Little Black Book.

No-one talks about "The Book". It is handed to the next person on the list at the start of each meeting. Longing looks are directed at it by its new custodian before it disappears into her bag, to be devoured the minute she walks in the door from face to face.

So what's inside? A round robin long short story, or short novella. Each writer must add another four pages to the story (plus any artwork they like), before passing it onto the next writer two weeks later. There are brief character bios in the back, but other than that it can go in any direction you want to take it.

The last time I had the book I turned a minor character into a major player, introduced a crooked cop to the story and gave one of the heroines an unusual cosmetic procedure. I can't wait to see how that story turned out. I'm anxiously awaiting my second round. I'm totally in the dark about this story but I did catch a glimpse of a pink feather as the book was handed across the table. Flamencos? Fairies? Melbourne Cup hats?

Oooohhh the suspense!

Ideas, Ideas

I've decided if I could write as fast as I collect ideas, I'd be a really prolific writer. I've got hundreds of photos and articles in my idea folders, and just recently I decided to try and sort them.

First up were the photos collected from magazines. Hundreds of potential heroines and heros, with a definite bias towards brunettes of both sexes. The majority of my characters are in the great outdoors, and a lot of the men are in denim. Plenty of inspiration there.

In the ideas folder there's articles on

• deaf dalmations,
• cycleways on disused rail corridors,
• a recent legal battle over a historic house smack bang in the middle of a local redevelopment,
• storm chasers,
• a school that travels with the agricultural show circuit, teaching the show children and
• a fascinating article on death and dying that I have no idea how to incorporate into a romance, but I can't throw out.

Unexpected highlights included the two page spread detailing Johnny Depp's movie career in photos (sadly no 21 Jump Street photo) and enough information on space to fill the Starship Enterprise.

I spent an afternoon and sorted this treasure trove into folders to make finding my carefully collected photos and ideas a little bit easier. Now my head is full of stories clamouring to be written.

Where should I start?

Collaging

Have you ever tried collaging? Above is the collage I made for my Death of a Decade story. A few months ago we trawled through Toowong Cemetery looking for a grave from our chosen decade - mine was the 1970's. From that one grave, we needed to weave a story. And you'll see the grave that fascinated me above. Why, oh why, is this grave unfinished after all these years?

Fast forward to May and the collaging workshop. There were so many magazines to choose from - thanks to my friend Danielle and her mum. I decided early on to try and use only black and white pictures to give the collage a historic feel. But then I started seeing images in colour and I just had to have them. And then there were those "other" photos, the ones I have set aside for another story I have floating around in my head. And the two page spread of Johnny Depp pictures I snaffled before anyone else noticed them.

You'll see the bottom corner of my collage is left blank - I wanted to add the picture of the grave, which I have now done. I'm halfway through telling Margaret's story, having a great time researching music history from the 1970's as my POV character is in jail, with only a transistor radio for company. Wish me luck....

Writing Retreat

I'm just back from the Helles Belles (my face to face group) writing retreat. It started with a bang on Friday night with a cocktail party to introduce our writer "selves" on the same day in 2015. We'd all been really busy, and all of us were published. Preparing my book covers gave me plenty of new ideas and I'm struggling to know which one to run with next.

Saturday started with a walk on the beach and collaging and creativity workshops, followed by plenty of writing. More writing, then another walk on the beach and the Annual Awards Dinner.

Sunday we broke with tradition (no walk) with half the Belles braving the pool - not bad for the week before winter (air temperature 14 degrees). Two of us stayed as long as possible and we thought it was great. Right up until we realised we couldn't get back into the apartment complex without the key (which we didn't have). A big thanks to Roseanne (who'd already left for the shower) for rescuing us from hypothermia, and for cooking us breakfast to make sure we warmed up.

So, we revitalised our creative souls and are ready for the year ahead. Bring on the Bootcamper Book in Month Challenge in June.

Writer's Slice - Butterscotch Brownies

Yesterday I had to take a plate to a farewell afternoon tea and I decided to make my favourite baked slice - Butterscotch Brownies. This is one of those slices that you can't stop at one, so every time I make it, the leftovers are frozen. Then after dinner each night, one piece comes out, and I check my emails over coffee and a slice before I start writing.

The recipe turns out differently every time I make it - chewy or crunchy depending on the weather, the brand of brown sugar and whether you use butter or margarine (I'm a butter girl). Baking this slice is a bit like the creative writing process - same base ingredients/process each time, but the end result is influenced by all the variables impacting on your life at that time. So many times, when the words won't come easily, just making this slice gets my creativity going. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Butterscotch Brownies

60g butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup SR flour

3/4 cup coconut

generous teaspoon of vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)

1 egg

Melt butter and sugar together to a butterscotch. Add vanilla and pre-scrambled egg (and salt). Stir in flour and coconut. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 20-25 minutes in a shallow greased cake tin. Cut into pieces and enjoy.

Cemetery Theatre Tour

My face to face writing group did a night-time historic cemetery ghost tour for their Christmas Party and we found it fascinating and inspiring. We said at the time we couldn't wait to go back.

This last weekend we did a creativity exercise loosely title "Death in a Decade" at the same cemetery. Each member of the group dressed up as someone from a decade - someone keeping the home fires burning during World War One(10's), a flapper from the 1920's, a housewife from the depression (the 30's), an elegantly dressed 1940's socialite (complete with real fur) and a tie-died hippy from the 70's.

We set about finding the monument of someone who had died during our decade, and tried to weave a story around their life or their death. Sounds morbid? No, it was fascinating. One gentleman in the 1920's buried his second wife five years after the death of his first wife. In the same grave! Imagine the second wife's family's reaction.

So many families buried young children in the early years of the cemetery there is a pamphlet prepared by the cemetery's historical society detailing these families, and we paused to consider the impact of living 70 years longer than your infant child. One grave held two unrelated men, and the wording of the headstone verse led us to believe they were in love. In 1919.

There were fascinating monuments - a sailboat in marble, a stained glass window set in an oval marble frame that catches the sunrise, a miniature garden complete with flowers and artificial grass. We'd only covered about a quarter of the cemetery before we all found inspiration we needed. We'll be researching the history of our eras and preparing the groundwork to let us work on these stories at our planned retreat in May.

I can't wait to see the stories we come up with. And we'll definitely be exploring the rest of this cemetery some time in the future.

Boosting Our Creativity - Part Two

Regular readers will remember that some of the Bootcampers are doing a creativity challenge - a lucky dip envelope full of photos to stimulate our inner story tellers.

I picked with eyes closed and chose a plain white envelope. It didn't look much, but the treasure contained inside! "Breaking the Mould" the newspaper headline screamed. It was the first thing I pulled out. My envelope has three characters- a hip young woman, slightly older well dressed man and a child of about 8. Add in a hand drawn Christmas picture (the real deal from someone's child), a real estate ad for a historic property, a family photo of three generations of men taken about 1900 and a birth notice.

Historical story was my immediate thought. No, you're supposed to be breaking the mould. So I've decided to let my imagination run wild - time travel, secret portals, paranormal activity. And that man has got to learn to loosen up. Not sure where this is going, but I'm on board for the ride.

Roseanne's envelope had a fabulous photo of a woman is a slinky dress surrounded by hundreds of pairs of different fire-truck red high heels, something that looked suspiciously like a Leo Sayer album, and a man who looked a little bit like Australian TV host Tony Barber.

Eleni's envelope had an Asian themed room, an appointment for a tournament and a one of a kind ceramic chess set. Oh, and a gardening and haircutting by the moon calendar.

All of these envelopes came from the same basic list, and I for one can't wait to see the stories we produce.

Boosting our Creativity

I love challenging my creativity and pushing the barriers of my storytelling - a legacy of a crusty old writer who tutored me in a year long short story writing course. He didn't enjoy romance, and tried his hardest to have me write different genres. And that involved throwing challenges my way. I wrote stories based on single words, occupations, feelings - anything he came up with. Each story pushed me to my limits, but looking back it was worth it.

A few of the Bootcampers who crit for each other are enjoying a creativity exercise - we're making and swapping story starter envelopes. You're given a list of items and you need to find pictures of them. These are sealed into an envelope (the style of envelope is part of the creative challenge) and then its lucky dip time - you choose someone else's envelope and off you go. We started the challenge on Friday night. By Saturday, most of us had sealed our envelopes. I was so enthused, I made up a second one to swap with my online crit partner. We swap envelopes next week, and the goal is to write a 3000 word short story within a month, then submit it for publication.

I can hardly wait to see what my lucky dip envelope holds.