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.

Destination: Iowa

Iowa. I've been there a handful times, considering my mother was born and raised there, and it's a place I remember very little about. Perhaps this is due to its similarities to non-Twin Cities Minnesota, or perhaps that the rumors of it being the most boring state since Kansas (which I can accurately attest to) are true. Either way, they allowed gay marriage recently. This is, probably, unrelated to the reason I'm attending the state which is the first marriage of my friends of immediate acquaintance.

I've been told by a number of people the early-to-mid-20s are when all of my friends get married, but I always replied with, "Clearly, you haven't met my friends." But I'm now eating those words as, outside of this Iowan union this weekend, another set of friends are to be wed come September. Not to mention my former roommate got married late last year without inviting, or even informing, me. So, clearly, the nerds are able to find partners in crime.

Getting to this wedding, as it's in Iowa and I'm in Indiana, is going to be an experience. Two cheap folks, myself and girlfriend, are hitting the road. We've already got grand plans involving audio books and coolers of preconstructed sandwiches. Though I suspect, after the first two hours, it'll just become the menagerie of misery and tardiness that road trips always become.

We're not the only ones from my circle of friends attending this wedding. No less than a gang of eight people who will probably be introduced by the groom as, "My gaming buddies," are going. Together, we stood shoulder-to-shoulder against demons, dragons, and sarcastic elves, which is probably why we had to bully him into even inviting us to the wedding. We discovered he was even dating the girl in December, a month later, we read a post on his Facebook congratulating him on the engagement. Fearing that he was planning to exclude us, we frantically began a campaign to ensure that his wedding was geeked-up a bit with talk of base attack bonuses and the similarities between dragonborn and dwarven culture. He probably anticipated only one or two of us making it, certainly not the band of eight we're bringing.

It's odd, really. The people who stepped up for this are people who normally refuse to even drop the greenback to go see a movie. People who, really, aren't that close to the guy. Heck, none of us really were, just his gaming group and we've barely exchanged words with him the last two years. Maybe he is more beloved than I'm giving credit for, but I suspect it's this wedding phenomenon.

Weddings are clearly important, they're one of those big moments in someone's life because they combine uniqueness, with a sense of general love and good will, with a party that possesses cake. On the other hand, they're the ultimate beacon for fair-weather friends (My WUNT article on the subject). Which, I suppose, is what I've become for admitting both that I wasn't really close to the guy anymore, and that I'm poor and cheap and can't afford trips; but I'm still going.

In this case, I justify it with wanting to reconnect. I don't expect that he'll move back to Minnesota and rejoin the ol' dungeon crawling group, but just being able to include him on my list of people I chat with now-and-again online is enough. I've maintained quite a few friendships that way. That way, if I'm ever traveling through Iowa again, I can crash at his place for free.