This year I joined Writers Victoria based out of the Wheelers Centre at the back of the State Library of Victoria.

The centre supports writers by providing an excellent library, events, workshops and other resources for people to write.

Twice a week they run Live Write sessions on Tuesdays and Fridays online. However on the first Friday of every month, they run the in-person Live Write session in their library.

Today I travelled into town to attend the session. It was the first time I had done these and didn’t know what to expect.

The co-ordinator welcomed and introduced herself then briefed us that we had 25 minutes to write something fiction or non-fiction from the point of view of a piece of furniture.

Immediately I got writing. I wrote from the perspective of Haruki Murakami’s desk at a specific time in his life where he was unsure about what he wanted to do with his life. Continue working at his cafe playing jazz music or finally becoming a writer to get his stories on paper. I wrote from the perspective of the desk finally being used for the purpose of supporting Murakami’s need to write.

At the end of the session, we could share our experiences of what we thought of the exercise. I piped up and shared my inspiration and afterwards, a man came and sat next to me and introduced himself. He showed me a book he had in his bag and it was Haruki Murakami’s “On Being a Novelist”.

I hadn’t seen this book and I thanked him for letting me know about it. We had a lovely conversation about the challenges of writing fiction and finding time to write.

I’ll do more of these because I need to practice writing and find my voice. I think it’s edging towards the quirky and absurd but I do wish I could pull together a story in its entirety without it flagging in the middle.

Oh well, it means I continue writing.