In just a few seconds, I had turned into a 33-year-old man, unshaven, with scruffy hair. I was at a point where I had no idea where my life was going, and was not so enthused about my career. One thing I did have a passion for was painting and sketching, it was the only thing I was good at. My loft apartment was crammed with sketch paper everywhere, on the desk, the floor and dining table, filled with finished and half-finished work, and the smell of paint seemed to trail behind me everywhere I went.
The only thing that seemed to ease my mind was my art and the sound of raindrops as they hit the window of the coffee shop I visited every day, sitting at the table facing the busy street. Everyone who passed seemed to have a destination, as I sat floating in and out of a daydream.
As I let my mind wander into this imaginary world of the character I had just created (his name is Alessandro, in case you were wondering), the British author David Almond spoke about the "generosity of the imagination".
Just a couple of hours before, colleagues were telling me "this is a session not to be missed" about his recent masterclass "Creativity Demystified" during the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. Following their advice, I decided to attend. The room was packed as Almond shared his love of the written word, how it began and how it continued to grow. His uncle once owned a printing shop in Newcastle, a city in north-east England with a history spanning hundreds of years. Almond said that, as an infant, he used to see the papers as if they were flying off the printer and that the whole process seemed magical.
Every writer, he added, had a different method and his was unconventional. He held up a manuscript of the book he is currently working on, put it down and held up an A4 plain paper notebook with scribbles, doodles, paragraphs and sentences that were in no particular order. He wrote down every idea that came to mind, no matter how small, and from there he built his stories.
"I was invited to speak to students in the UK and a little girl held up her hand and asked me, 'How do you turn that into perfect lines?' What a fantastic question that was," he said.
He gave us exercises during which we had to write down the answer to questions he presented with only a few seconds between each, hence the 33-year-old lost and lonely Alessandro.
He also held up a fizzy drink can and we had to write what role it played in solving a murder case. My answer? The murderer was watching his victim outside in a car and without thinking, threw the can before entering the house and police identified him through DNA evidence. Another question was; a famous dog had written a book, what was the name of the book? I jotted down "Down and Dusty" while my colleague went for "Please Paws", or was it "Press Paws"?
To be a writer, he said, there is no one way of creating a character, a scene or a plot.
Now all I have to do is figure out what happened to poor old Alessandro.
