by Vanessa Preston

In the survival story I was writing for NaNoWriMo last November, my characters were stranded in the wilderness … an imaginary and extremely remote area somewhere near  Barrington Tops in NSW, Australia, to be precise.  When I last saw them, Indi and her friends were only just discovering the depth of their predicament.

That was several months ago, and my characters are still there.  I didn’t finishing the story, and I left the children stranded there, in the bush, fending for themselves through flooding rain and searing heat.  Poor darlings!

Fortunately, I escaped … did I even deserve to survive after abandoning a bunch of children in such horrifying circumstances?

Ahem.  Normally at this point I would still be stuck there, drowning in despair and procrastination, frying in the heat of self-criticism … but this time something was different, and thankfully I wasn’t lost for too long.

I’d better rescue those kids sometime soon … in the meantime, I have SO much to tell you!

For the last six months I’ve been buzzing with learning, experimenting, and implementing strategies in my daily life which have changed the way I work as a writer and artist.  I wish I was better at recording the process as it occurred, so that I could present you with a foolproof rescue remedy.  Instead of keeping a detailed journal I was busy making up for lost time, and I just shared snapshots and snippets on Facebook.

Tomorrow I will share the first instalment in my “Survival Guide for Stranded Writers” series.  I am excited to share what I’ve learned, and hope it will be super helpful!