By Daisy Bard

Writing (and unwriting, and rewriting) a book 

They say that everyone’s got that novel inside of them. But here, you may have to make an entire book in a day. 

On Monday, Marc sprung on us that we’d all have to submit our books in pairs, and that our book partners would also be our partners for the next portfolio brief. Cue mass panic. 

After the initial worry subsided, I thought about Marc’s reasoning and this seemed like a good problem/solution exercise from him. To my mind, he noticed that as a year, we were being slow to commit and pair up, so he made it compulsory to work with someone intensively for a while. As a bit of a commitment phobe (creatively), I found this slightly worrying. But one day in, we had a full, mocked up book and it was refreshing to know we’re capable of achieving that in so little time.

Then for the book crit with Andy and Marc. This was hugely useful in terms of a ‘bed, marry, kill’ exercise for various campaigns in the book. Some work was worth developing and pushing further, a few bits were good to go, and then there was kindling for the bonfire. 

Every time we see a mentor whose taste we trust and respect, we learn another brilliant thing. My main takeaway from Andy this time was, ‘don’t cheapen the idea.’ With one-day briefs, and portfolio ideas, we’ve been taught to hit as many touch points as possible on a campaign. But we have to be able to recognise when an execution isn’t relevant and is just padding. And then we have to burn it. 

Much like Marc did with his music this week (much appreciated!), we have to perform constant overhauls on our work. So there’s no point in having an ego about stuff. Apparently, none of what’s there now will be in our final book. 

I’m looking forward to writing a thousand new books.