What’s it all about?

Throw Away Lines is the latest project from 26, the writers’ collective. 26 of our writers are going to create 26 stories in 26 days. Each story will be based on rain-swept, wind-strewn, handwritten notes found on London’s streets over the past couple of years.

26er Andy Hayes has been walking to work in Clerkenwell from Waterloo ever since the 7/7 bombings. Andy is a tidy and curious chap. He doesn’t like litter and he notices flotsam and jetsam wherever he goes. Once on Blackfriars Bridge he paused to take a photo of a discarded Nero coffee cup and noticed a scruffy handwritten note a few yards away. He bent down and picked it up, it was a heartfelt rant against racism. It had a muddy footprint on it, as though it had been stamped on by a Nazi jackboot.

He kept the letter and the seed of an idea took root in his head and started to grow. What if he looked out for other discarded hand-written notes, or ‘throw away lines’? He could keep and collect them, and, who knows, one day they might come in handy as material for his own writing.

He took the muddy letter home and placed it carefully in a clean plastic wallet. Then washed his hands. Two years later, he had at least 26 of these throw away lines. One, found outside an English language school, stated a brazen promise to, ‘…only do the pass criteria’. There was a letter from a mother jetting off to foreign climes, leaving her daughter Anya with her Nan. Another gave permission for Morgan to be allowed ‘off the premises for boxing’. There was a beautiful song complete with chord changes and a small post-it saying simply, ‘Have a lovely trip x’.

Then, nothing happened. He kept on collecting but all the stories remained unwritten. He had an idea, to share the storytelling with other 26ers. He pitched it to John Simmons over coffee and a sticky bun at the Museum of London. He liked it, the 26 board did too. Elise Valmorbida offered to help. Now, each scrap is going to be the starting point for a small story: a story about an abandoned story if you like.

At Wordstock, a festival of words at the Free Word centre in Clerkenwell, 26 writers were matched up with 26 stories, all drawn out of two white-spotted bins, one pink, one blue. Now each story, up to 1,500 words, will be posted here initially over 26 consecutive days from mid-November. Then, we plan an exhibition, maybe even a book – definitely a t-shirt.

We look forward to seeing you again soon…