One Year Anniversary: Waterborne
Today, the 24th of October marks the launch of my second novel, Waterborne: Chronicle of the Clan of Noah. In celebration of this anniversary, I will share the story of the origin of the novel.
Since February 2017 I have facilitated a writer’s workshop. In 2018 we began working through a book of writing exercises called What If by Pamela Painter and Anne Bernays. My experience with the first exercise in their book turned out to be profound. On Saturday, 10 March 2018, I completed that first exercise in preparation for our writers workshop on12 March 2018. In doing so I wrote a line of text from the perspective of Shem, one of Noah’s sons.
This is my father’s story. He is dead. He’ll not be telling it. I’ll begin by saying that, at the start, none of us knew what a cubit was.
These four sentences didn’t survive the 19 drafts of the manuscript, but with them I was hooked on telling the story of Noah via the perspective of his sons, his daughters-in-law, and his wife. Writing exercises are easy to find, and not all of them are created equal, but What If is a strong collection and—as it turns out—significant results are possible.
Happy first anniversary, Waterborne!
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