Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
What a surreal day. Motivational and dare I say, potentially transformational.
Today was one of those days that gives you the wake-up call and the kick up the arse you know you’ve needed for a long time.
A day spent in a room full of bright-eyed, fabulous folk willing to open up and share.
A day full of laughs and stories (and coffee and food).
I was excited and admittedly a little nervous once I booked into the Gunnas Masterclass. A dear friend suggested I go and then threw in the babysitting for good measure – sorted.
Not usually known for my punctuality (with the exception of flying/going to the theatre/any event where you will literally be locked out or left behind if you are late), I made a concerted effort to arrive an impressive (for me, anyway) ten minutes early. Off to a great start.
We settled in to some getting to know you stuff before we knuckled down to our first five minute writing exercise – the rule being our pen could not leave the page. Here’s an excerpt of my first literal brain dump:
“So here we are in the city on a Saturday where I have a whole six hours to myself with the bloody amazing Catherine Deveny and about 15 other lovely humans. We’ve just spent the last two hours introducing ourselves. What has struck me so far is how everyone is layered like an onion and the stories that have been coming out have been blowing my mind. We meet people in everyday life and exchange platitudes (God I hate small talk!) but today it’s been like Devs has snuck some truth serum in the coffee as we’ve all been spewing forth these fabulous, juicy stories – we’ve been peeling onions.”
That was just the beginning. As the rest of the day unfolded, Catherine revealed tools and tricks to help us stop fucking around and start writing. Everything from shower caps to tomato kitchen timers came out of the magic carpet bag. Note to self – invest in a button that shrieks “NO!” “NO!” “NO!” every time I entertain a procrastinating thought.
I have a hard deadline of 10pm to get this done by and I’m taking it to the wire. Nothing like your laptop deciding tonight’s the night to give you a very inconvenient, very uncooperative System32\config\systemprofile blah blah error when you’re trying to write! I was starting to think the universe was conspiring against me and it was all too hard. However I decided that if I learnt anything today, it’s that bullshit excuses must henceforth be banished. And I somehow managed to fix the nasty error. Go me.
I’m looking forward to sitting down with my spotty shower cap on this week to crank out some words. Having been anointed with Catherine’s wisdom, I now know it’s of no consequence if what comes out is good, bad or fucking ugly, it just needs to come out.