Maybe you’ve got an overdue assignment. Maybe you have a deadline in two days. Or maybe you’ve signed up for the Rabbit Hole event at the Emerging Writers Festival, with the aim of producing 30 000 words in less than three days, possibly even as part of the online team which is hosted and directed by yours truly.

Yeah. Maybe that last one in particular.

Anyway, whatever the reason, there comes in a time in a writer’s life when you have to write a lot in a short time. There’s no real short-cut to this; you can’t just stare really hard at the monitor and make words appear through sheer force of will. Believe me, I’ve tried. But there are tools that can make the process that bit easier – they won’t make the words appear faster, but they can make the task feel less daunting and keep you focused on laying down the wordcount.

Here are some things that have worked for me – I think they can work for you too. They’re weighted a little bit towards creative writing, but most are just as applicable to writing non-fiction, theses, essays or schizophrenic manifestos.

Start from zero

Whether it’s a blank page or a new Word file, the best way to begin a bulk writing exercise is to start from scratch, whether than means beginning a new project or creating a separate document that can later be added to an existing one. Part of this is practical – the work you create when writing for volume is not going to be polished, and it’s better to partition it from the rest of your efforts until it’s been overhauled. More important is the psychological boost you get from a fresh start. If you have 10 000 words and add 5000, that’s a 50% improvement; if you have zero words and add 5000, that’s an infinity percent improvement.

Perfect is the enemy of finished

I get the urge to fine-tune a sentence or paragraph until you’re happy with it, but there is a time to do that and that time is not now. All that matters is getting words down on the page, one after the other, and there is no going back to make it beautiful or lyrical or remotely coherent. The work you produce when bulk writing is not a first draft, it is a zero draft; it’s a roadmap and a set of tools to help make a first draft later on. Quantity over quality is your mantra right now, and your inner editor needs to be gagged, blindfolded and dropped down a well for a while. Lassie can rescue them later. That dog can do anything.

Don’t touch that backspace key!

And when I say don’t edit, I goddamn mean it – that means no going back. Did you make a speeling mustake? Fix it later. Did you decide to make the hero’s cat a robot dog? Just change it and move on, remembering to find-and-replace ‘hairball’ with ‘USB bone’ tomorrow. Every second you spend deleting the last word you wrote just because it doesn’t make sense in any known language is a second you’re not spending writing another word. Suck it and and keep going; you are a word shark that must keep moving, and if you stop to fix the tense in your last sentence YOUR WORDGILLS WILL STOP WORKING AND YOU WILL DROWN.

Structure is your friend

Writing 30 000 words is terrifying. Writing 1000 words? That seems pretty easy by comparison. Now just do that 30 times! Breaking up your work into shorter chunks allows you to monitor your progress and feel good about reaching milestones. If your project allows it, spend some time before you start writing doing a rough plan of the structure, working how many thousands of words go into each stage/chapter/subdivision and how many of those there should be. A large number of small parts is better than a small number of large parts – if possible, have 30 1000-word chapters rather than 10 3000-word chapters. If that can’t be done, try to break down those big chapters into smaller subparts so you still have fast, regular goals to work towards.

Plan ahead – or fuck it, just make shit up

If you have an outline and a clear direction in mind for your work, then you can use that as a roadmap to get to where you want to go. Alternatively you can wander around at random, going down interesting side streets and mugging new ideas in alleyways, and still end up at your destination. As long as the words keep coming there is NO WRONG WAY to go about getting them. At the same time, it’s worth having a think about how you go about things and possibly whether it would help to borrow a bit from the other approach – to have a loose plan that you can then improvise within, or to allow yourself a little room to change direction when working to your outline. Pick the approach that works for you, because the process is less important than the goal.

Research before or after but not now

Is there a vital piece of information that informs your text? Cool. Did you research it already so that it’s fresh in your mind or printed out next to your computer? Great, put it in there. Haven’t done it yet? Then leave Wikipedia unopened in your browser window and keep writing, damnit. Time spent researching is time not spent writing and we have no patience for that right now. If you know you need to insert some data and you don’t have it, just write ***ADD 500 WORDS ON DOLPHIN PORN*** and keep going; you can come back later and flesh it out. Alternatively, if you want to keep the wordcount up, make up whatever facts you need to – it’s called fiction for a reason, people – and then fix the egregious falsehoods when you revise the text to make it readable by humans.

Don’t stop, change direction

Sometimes you’re going to get stuck on a scene or a section and not be able to move forward; you need time to think it over and work through things. Don’t do that. Instead, put that part of the project to one side and start on something else. Shift to a new scene, a new location, a new character; skip to a different subheading of the essay and write on that topic for a while. Or just change it up where you are right now to shake you out of the rut – as Chandler famously said, ‘When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand’. Always keep moving; don’t let anything stop you!

Distractions are inevitable

Eventually something’s going to stop you. You’ll get a leg cramp, your pets will catch fire, your wife will demand something selfish like you driving her to the hospital. Hell, at some point you’re probably going to want to attend to those base human needs like eating, sleeping or checking Twitter. And you know what? That’s fine. Don’t try to remove all distractions before you start, because it won’t happen, and instead you’ll just end up procrastinating as you keep looking for more things to close down. Let it be. The key thing is not to avoid all distractions, it’s to minimise the attention and time you give them and to quickly regain your focus and momentum when you get back to work.

Reward yourself

And sometimes it’s just time to take a break because you’ve earned it. Did you hit a milestone and finish a chapter? Well done! Go have a beer or a make-out session or play Angry Birds for five minutes. You’re not a machine or a million monkeys with typewriters – well, probably not – and you deserve to treat yourself for working hard. Regular high-five-me-bro breaks are an important way to keep your focus and positivity up and to prevent burnout. The key thing is to step back, feel good about how things are going, finish the beer and then get back to work. And if you hit a point where you finish a section and decide to maintain the momentum and keep writing rather than flex off, then good on you – keep it going and make the next break even better.

No cheating

Is time growing short and the target too far away to reach? Want to just copy a chunk of text from another source or just write COCKDANCE COCKDANCE 500 times? Dude, I can’t stop you and I won’t know you’ve done it, but you know it’s bullshit. The only person you’re cheating is you because you’re giving up; the only person who can award you for reaching the finishing line is you, and you’ll know you don’t deserve any kind of medal. There are no short-cuts, there are no cheat codes. Better to make a genuine attempt then blow smoke up people’s arse. Because the only person breathing the arse-smoke is you.

There’s always another day

And if you can’t hit the target in the time frame, so what? This isn’t heart surgery, and no-one’s going to die if you don’t write 30 000 words in a weekend, not unless you’re in some weird and poorly-paced Saw sequel. No matter how far you get, what matters is that you made the attempt and laid some words down, be it 20 000 or 2000. Coming out the other side of a writing boot camp gives you a better appreciation of what you can achieve when you go all in, and leaves you with a mess o’ words that you can now tweak and revise and sculpt at your relative leisure.

Everyone’s a winner, baby. That’s the truth.

–

Are you inspired? Are you fired up? Are you still reading? For those who are, thanks for sticking around – I hope it was worth your while!

If you’ve got any other tips for pushing word weight, please leave a comment. Share what you know, if only to save me from writing another 1500+ words on the topic later.

I’ve been looking through the program and trying to decide what events I really want to go to. This year is tough because I feel like I have more time, being a student and having the break between semesters, and yet I am no longer working so I am kind of broke.

But the festival and studying really compliment and reinforce each other. Studying has been really useful to focus myself on my own writing practice and the chance to give as much energy as I can to it. It is important to see that I am not studying to later become a writer once I graduate, have passed the test and learnt stuff, but I am practising now, submitting, being published and developing as I go along. Also, we will never stop learning and developing ourselves as writers.

I’ve heard some things being said around the Twittersphere and various corners of the Internet about creative writing courses, and whether or not they are useful. The debate seems timeless and will keep coming up, but I think it’s worth looking at from my perspective as a new student that’s previously been working on my writing without study.

I definitely didn’t need to study this course in order to be a writer. No publisher asks for your degree when you submit a short story, and most of what you learn is by just writing a lot and reading as much as you can. There are also many things you can’t ‘learn’ in the formal sense. But I don’t believe in this idea of innate talent and the idea that you’ve either ‘got it’ or you don’t.

The benefits of the course include being surrounded by your peers, working alongside them, developing with them, and the regular practice of writing to deadlines, workshopping, as well as some of the theory and exercises it provides. It doesn’t necessarily teach you how to write but provides you with the means to teach yourself how to write and to develop.

But I think it would be a mistake to think that developing as a writer stops at going to class, doing your assignments and maybe submitting something at the end of semester to a magazine. My first semester has been a process of discovering how my own writing practice and routine can fit into the new routine and schedule that’s been placed before me. It’s something I’m still working on, but finding that time to write your own stuff outside of the course is important as well as finding other avenues of development.

Which is where the Emerging Writers’ Festival comes back in. It’s an opportunity to surround yourself with another group of peers, of people outside of your own university, and those that have finished studying or haven’t studied in that formal sense. EWF raises issues and talks about things probably not covered in your course, or an issue covered in a new way, or from a different angle. The Town Hall conference on the first Saturday and Sunday is the premiere event of the festival and is jam-packed with ideas and inspiration.

There are also the performance events, the open mic and lots of chances to drink and chat at Rue Babelons. I will be blogging throughout the festival on the festival in general here, and then on spoken word and poetry specific things at MelbourneSpokenWord.com.

My piece ‘Occupying Writers’ will also appear in The Emerging Writer, the festival’s journal, which will be launched during the festival.

Post written by Associate Producer, Tim Williams.

Like a pendulum, the team at the Emerging Writers’ Festival 2012 is currently in full swing and we’re all very excited about the program we have on offer this year. I must admit that my wrists are already starting to cramp up after an onslaught of tweeting, blogging and emailing in correspondence with the festival’s venues and our talented artists.

This year, I’m at the helm of the pecha kucha-based “Revenge of the Nerds: Slide Night” and I’m pleased about how it is shaping up so far. Led by our fabulously geeky MC, Ben McKenzie, our artists will be showcasing a very disparate array of nerdy hobbies and geeky obsessions which, let’s face it; we’ve all had at some point. Whether it’s playing Dungeons and Dragon or still putting on that old Wham! record you bought in 1984, everybody has those little hidden obsessions that, often, we are too embarrassed to bring up in public.

My first major childhood obsession was with the movie Grease which I still, to this day, carry a certain guilty reverence for. Come on! Tell me you wouldn’t want to go to a high school where students spontaneously broke into song at lunchtime and settled their issues with a car race on Thunder Road! From this starting point, I inevitably got taken in by the ‘Hanson’ (Taylor was my favourite) and ‘5ive’ boy-band phenomenon. I seem to recall that the pop groups of the 90s divided the genders a bit as the lads had 5ive and Hanson while the girls favoured Nsync and the Backstreet Boys more. However, one thing that seemed to unite all these groups (apart from their fanatical followings) was the fact that there was always one member in every group who did bugger-all but was still somehow everyone’s favourite. In the case of 5ive, it was J, the eyebrow ring-toting, English white rapper whose rap break in the middle of every song was always a fan highlight. Although my iPod now displays a much different selection of artists and my copy of Hanson’s seminal album ‘Middle of Nowhere’ is probably still gathering at the Moonee Ponds Cash Convertors, these obsessions nonetheless helped shape my childhood in a significant way.

Before taking on production duties for this event, I had completely no understanding of ‘pecha kucha,’ which is the format all of the presentations will be adopting. For the uninitiated, pecha kucha is a style of performance whereby artists perform accompanied by a slideshow consisting of 20 slides being shown for 20 seconds each. Challenging, right? Pecha kucha is still quite a recent phenomena which originated in Japan within the field of architecture. It’s a little known fact that architects have a history of ‘crapping on’ when it comes to presenting their own proposals so pecha kucha was introduced as a way of keeping their presentations a lot briefer and tighter. The great thing about the technique is that is keeps both the artists and the audience on their toes as there is only a short amount of time to get the information across. With the broad theme of nerd culture colliding head-pm with this new age format, the Revenge of the Nerds: Slide Night is bound to be one fast, frenetic and fun night where the geeks will inherit the earth. Will our artists make it? Well, you’ll have to come along and find out…

Tickets available here.

Image: chrisinplymouth

At the festival we are pleased to be presenting Future Bookshop at NGV Studio, an exploration into how we will be reading, publishing and of course writing texts in the future.

Future Bookshop will feature literary predictions from Emerging Writers’ Festival, Express Media, Freeplay, if:book Australia, Paper Radio, People Collective, SPUNC, Matt BlackWood and more… and we’d love to feature YOUR ideas as well!

We are looking for ideas (or predictions, or suggestions) about how we will be WRITING in the future, or what the life of a writer will be like in the future. Your ideas can take any form – blog post, plain text, video, image – and be in any style – journalism, statement, rant, fiction, poetry, essay, etc. All the pieces will be included on a wall of ideas for people to come in and explore.

You can send text, video or a link to a blog post or web address for inclusion in Future Bookshop… it can be work that has previously been published or is brand new (as long as it’s your own!). Of course we will include your name on the piece.

We are looking for LOTS of ideas about the future of writing! Send your work or links to me on director@emergingwritersfestival.org.au. Closing date is Monday 21 May, however, it’s first in best dressed.

So instead, I’m gonna talk about all the other places where I have been (or will be) talking about The Obituarist.

IT’S A RULES-LEGAL LOOPHOLE DAMNIT

…man, I have really got to get out of this sudden all-caps habit.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been doing this week:

• I talked to Foz Meadows about The Obituarist and the Chandleresque tradition of hard-boiled fiction. I also revealed that I studied Literature at Uni DON’T LOOK SO SHOCKED oh crap I’m doing it again.
• I talked to Alan Baxter about The Obituarist and confessed that I like Batman a lot. Did that come as a shock to anyone? If so I’m very sorry.
• And I talked to Kirstyn McDermott about, yes, The Obituarist and my thoughts on self-epublishing and the false divide between hardcopy authors and e-authors. It gets a bit serious in places.

Can I just say that this whole interview thing is AWESOME FUN? Because it is. It’s like getting drunk and talking about writing except that you’re sober (bad) and no-one interrupts you (good!).

I should have a couple of more interviews coming up in the next couple of weeks; I’ll keep you posted as they come together. One that I’m UNBELIEVABLY EXCITED  about isn’t in print – I should (fingers crossed) be on 3RRR Radio’s Byte Into It program on May the 23rd. How incredibly fucking cool is that! I promise to talk excitedly and largely incoherently about social media and identity theft and not spend too much time plugging my book.

And lest we forget, the other major activity on the horizon is the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and my involvement as the coach/cheerleader/chief bully for the online team at the Rabbit Hole writing boot camp event. I’m getting my ducks in a row for that and will be writing more on the topic this coming weekend.

(I also hope to get a slot at the EWF Open Mic on the 3rd of June to do a quick reading from The Obituarist, but that’s first-in-best-dressed and I can’t promise I’ll get in. But show up anyway, just in case!)

So yeah. May. It’s been a pretty AMAZEBALLS month, and shows no signs of letting up soon.

Why was The Rabbit Hole started?
Queensland Writers Centre CEO Kate Eltham wanted to get some serious words down on the page – whether they were good or bad words, she just wanted to get a lot of writing done towards the goal of completing her manuscript. With that in mind, she set herself the goal of 30,000 words in three days, and decided to dedicate a long-weekend to the task, and go down the rabbit hole, inviting QWC members to go down with her. And so The Rabbit Hole was born.

How has it gone in the past?
Both of The Rabbit Hole events held so far have been popular and successful. We hold them in the QWC Learning Centre, an open inviting space with lots of tables and chairs. Everyone settles into their own writing space – some people have headphones in, some use a notebook, some use a laptop. We also had a mixture of writers along – novelists, poets, and non-fiction writers. Some people write furiously, others stop for lunch and stretches. While we set the goal of 30,000 words each, we also encouraged everyone to set their own goals depending on their specific projects and headspace. Overall, being in one space with other writers all absorbed in their individual projects is both motivating and heartening.

What have people gotten out of the event?
The three key things that people get out of the event are: some serious wordage towards their manuscript, an important motivational push, the sense of joining a community of like-minded people. Here is some feedback (as it was published in WQ, March 2012) from the last Rabbit Hole:

I live in cattle country and often feel disconnected from my writing community. The Rabbit Hole events are one way for me to join in online and feel, at least in part, as though I’m connected again (though nothing can beat the actual in-person camaraderie and motivation such events can inspire. I wrote for two of the three days during the first event in July, achieving around 10,00 words, and I was please with that. In January, I used the time to edit the same novel and discovered that some of the best chapters in the manuscript were actually written during the first Rabbit Hole event. – Joanne Schoenwald, QWC Member

I found the Rabbit Hole experience (both of them) to have accelerated my writing and really contributed to my manuscript – in quantity and quality. Further, the online community developed from the events has enabled me to form my own writing review groups from writers in similar fields. Several of us are noticing that in three days we can write up to 30,000 words of high-quality writing. A few have started mini-Rabbit Holes one weekend a month to write more often. All in all, an excellent experience and I will be back for the next one. – Cameron Boyd, QWC Member

My first QWC Rabbit Hole was not what I expected. I never dreamed that a person who could barely write more than 1,000 words in a day could aspire to a 30,000 goal. I gave it a go anyway (albeit with a smaller goal – only 10,000). Living in Toowoomba meant that I thought I’d feel isolated. When I posted my minor milestones to the Facebook group, I received encouraging comments and ‘likes’. I now knew that I wasn’t doing it alone. I cracked the 5,000 the first day, blazed through the 10,000 words half-way through the second, and topped the 20,000 word mark on the third. I write like I never had before. Yet, I got tired. Yes, my eyes got that sore, gritty feel from starting at the monitor for too long. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I now know that I’m not limited by my past, minor achievements. – Mark McDonough, QWC Member

The Melbourne team is full, but still have spaces in the online team for people outside of Brisbane, Melbourne and Hobart. To register for the online team, please email sam@emergingwritersfestival.org.au

This event was created by the Queensland Writers’ Centre.

Image: valkyrieh116

We are happy to announce that we will have AUSLAN interpreters available at the our Saturday Town Hall Writers’ Conference on 26th May. We have opened tickets for the deaf community on this day at the concession rate of $28 – these can be booked here.

Additionally, we are pleased to have Asphyxia in our program this year, who you may know as a fabulous puppeteer and author of the Grimstones. Due to interest from the deaf community we have opened single-panel tickets to her event, which will be interpreted: Further details below:

Cross Platform, Saturday 26th May, 1.45pm
There can be more than one way to tell a story. Different mediums can bring in new elements to an existing tale, or stories can be told across many platforms right from the start. Meet some artists who write across multiple mediums. With Asphyxia, Eliza Hull, John Richards and Jackie Ryan. Hosted by Pigeons Projects. This panel is priced at $12 full / $8 concession. Bookings here.

Creating this shortlist was extremely difficult as the quality of entries overall were very high. We are pleased with the diversity and creativity of the shortlist, and feel that all the writers on it are voices to watch:

• Lena Pasqua, LaTrobe University
• Stuart Hall, Monash University
• Michelle Li, Monash University
• Alice Whitmore, Monash University
• Tully Hansen, RMIT
• Jo Day, RMIT
• Veronica Sullivan, RMIT
• Christopher Edwards, University of Melbourne
• Andre Dao, University of Melbourne
• Callum Rhodes, UTS
• Elizabeth Stevenson, University of Wollongong
• Callum O’Donnell, University of Wollongong
• Lois Mitchell, Edith Cowan University
• Vivien Wong, University of NSW

Shortlisted entries will have their story included in the Penguin Shorts Monash Prize anthology, and be in the running to win the $5000 prize pool. Additionally, the shortlisted students will be invited to our Stories that Matter event, where the Prize will be awarded.