Question.
What do you get when you put 50 novelists, screenwriters, graphic novelists, children’s writers, playwrights and film-makers in a room together, other than a headache?
Or to put it another way, how many writers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: as many as can turn full circle in a group while standing on a chair.
360 Narratives at the Barcelo Hotel in Stirling was an exercise in revolving ideas so dizzying and so packed with fun-filled japes that by the end I felt like a genius, or maybe that was the person beside me, I could no longer tell the difference.
We pitched, brainstormed, networked, crowd-sourced, speed-dated, cross-platformed and invented till the froth flew, and then we did it all again.
Courtesy of the Playwright’s Society, and run by some of the leading lights of eh … stuff such as Fiona Sturgeon Shea, Jenny Brown, Mark Grindle and Claire Dow, and with input from the Messiah Himself, Phil Parker, it was one of the most intense and rewarding weekends I’ve ever spent anywhere. And I include in that a disastrous trip to Scarborough when I was nine with my family, and a shameful alcohol-related incident in Johannesburg airport for which I am still receiving counselling.
There were far, far too many famous people taking part to name here, and anyway one shouldn’t. But among them were Beatrice Colin, Alice Thompson, Joan Lennon, Rodge Glass, Andrea Barr, David Griffith, Ros Borland, Virginia Heath and Vivien French. And many others too well-known to mention.
We got on great and loved each other to death.
But if anyone wants that story I developed in that group, and there’s money in it, it’s mine …
Mine, I tell you!
davidtmanderson
