3-Day Novel Contest and me

Just over a week ago, I participated in the 3-Day Novel Contest. This contest is very appropriately named, as it requires its contestants to write a novel in three days, over the Labor Day weekend.

Perhaps "novel" isn't the right word. They state that the average entry is 100 double-spaced pages. My 92 page entry clocked in at just over 24,000 words; a far cry from novel length these days, maybe even insatisfactory for a novella. But, forgetting for a minute the juxtaposition of people reading less, and books getting longer and less approachable, I am still very proud of my entry into this contest and consider its length sufficient. After all, it's not how big it is, but how you use it that matters.

The whole thing started, for me, just after the stroke of midnight and I wrote until about 4am. "Wrote" meaning that I redid the first three pages six times, mostly coming out the same, and hitting myself for it being shitty, until I finally went to sleep.

The theme of knowing what I was writing was shitty would continue through the whole process. To this minute, I still consider the whole thing to be a disaster as far as readability, character development, and plot are concerned. This concerns me, as I usually consider my stories to be the best thing since sliced bread, and they often turn out pretty alright.

Time did a funny thing while I was writing. Time just seemed to disappear. I would look up after finishing an almost-page-long scene and an entire hour had passed. It did not feel as though an hour had passed, it felt more like ten minutes had, but I trusted my clock enough to believe that, in fact, an hour had passed. It was as though I had entered a separate place in time, aging at one-sixth the normal rate.

Hunger operated along those same lines. Over the entire weekend, I ate two plates of nachos, a can of salt and vinegar Pringles, and a beef stick. I drank almost constantly, whether it be water, coke, or grapefruit juice.

And that's it. Not half as elegant as I wanted to describe the process, but whatever. More to come when I feel comfortable letting folks read it.