It’s 2014 and at Brighton Secondary School, a Write a Book in a Day revolution is about to begin.
The prospect of participating in the competition is snapped up by Year 10 students that form part of the school’s Creative Writers Group.
The trio, who each play a string instrument, grab two of their artist friends and dub themselves the Story Stringers. It is the beginning of a long love affair with Australia’s most inspiring writing challenge and a desire to raise funds for vital kids’ cancer research.
Over a decade and tens of thousands of words later, the Story Stringers are still creating something great. While a handful of artists have left, those three original members that started it all – Jessica McDonald, Meg Pope and Katarina Holmes – are still competing in the Open category of the ultimate 12-hour test of teamwork.
And winning, mind you.
2020 saw the Story Stringers contingent take out the Best Book Open category with ‘Chasing Rainbows’, intertwining Aboriginal culture into their writing. The Highly Commended ‘Transcendence’, written in 2014 while the team were in the Middle School category, is another that lives long in the memory.
The team has seen it all. Conflicting timezones, covid isolations and even having an artist send illustrations while working at their day job. It’s their process, Jessica says, that is key.
“We have always had only two writers, one for each main character, alternating points of view by chapter. Members have come and gone since our high school days, but we’ve continued to recruit others, as well as new editors,” she says.
“Over time, we have found it helpful to spend only a couple of hours as a whole group in the morning developing a plot, before sending the two writers to another space to commence the first few chapters. During this writing time the rest of the team map out the full plot details, start editing chapters as they come in, and work with the artists to decide on illustrations. Probably one of our biggest challenges is coming up with a title!”
Jessica, Meg and Katarina took some years off in 2017 and 2018 to focus on university, but their love for the competition remained strong in those years. They returned in 2018 in the Open category and have never looked back.
“For the writers it’s an annual day to let out all that creativity that we don’t get to use in our day jobs, an interesting challenge to write child-friendly works, and fun to write together like we used to in high school,” Jessica says.
“As a team, we view WABIAD as a challenging, but ultimately a fun and worthwhile activity to do together each year.
“Some of us only see each other on our WABIAD writing days, so it’s a great opportunity to catch up with friends! We also work very well as a team and enjoy solving the parameter challenges together.”
“For the writers it’s an annual day to let out all that creativity that we don’t get to use in our day jobs, an interesting challenge to write child-friendly works, and fun to write together like we used to in high school,” Jessica says.
“As a team, we view WABIAD as a challenging, but ultimately a fun and worthwhile activity to do together each year.
“Some of us only see each other on our WABIAD writing days, so it’s a great opportunity to catch up with friends! We also work very well as a team and enjoy solving the parameter challenges together.”
In another full circle moment, not too dissimilar to Clare Landon, Katarina is now a teacher and introduced the competition to her school, Henley High, last year. Conveying the altruistic elements of the competition to her students, Katarina has convinced students to fundraise for The Kids’ Cancer Project via both Write a Book in a Day and other initiatives.
“As a team who have been going for so long, we are lucky to have many supportive family members who continue to sponsor us year after year,” Jessica says.
“We also speak to our colleagues at work about the event and the cause and make posts on our social media to raise awareness.”
As a team that’s undertaken Write a Book in a Day for so many years, you’d be right in thinking the Story Stringers have a few tips.
“Include as much art as possible. Whether it’s full-page art behind or around the text or small relevant drawings adjacent to page numbers,” Jessica says.
“Another tip is to have several editors with slightly different jobs, the first one can be reading for grammar, spelling or punctuation issues, another for phrasing and tense, another for consistency.
“We know it can be tempting for everyone to be involved in each role, but sometimes that brings too many cooks to the kitchen!
