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.

Here we go again

This is the sixth blog I've tried to make since deciding I was a writer. Traditionally, I've always made the first post self-referential and, in spite of the overwhelming success of those previous projects, the theme is sticking. This is because I feel a need to justify the project, having spit upon the concept of blogs for much of my life.

Essentially, I hated blogs because they're just a bunch of assholes writing their opinions online and pretending everyone cares. Then it occurred to me that 90% of professional writers fall into the same "assholes who think people care" definition. And so, I either had to revise my opinions of blogs or admit that writing is bogus, and I refuse to do that. Thus, this was created.

Why I think this particular incarnation will succeed, at least better than the previous projects, is that I'm embracing the spirit of engaging in selfishness, unabashedly; it's like I'm writing a cover letter. In that same spirit, creating a body of writing so that people who hire people with bodies of writing have a body of writing to refer to. Basically, yes, I'm trolling for a job with this. If you happen to know anyone, let me know. The final reason I have hope in this project, is that I'm presently blogging for WakeUp Naptown!, an Indianapolis-area blog, and have already come up with numerous ideas for entries that are either too long, too short, too fictional, or too fantastic to include on that website, thus creating a need for a dump such as this.

So here you are, reading about what I think and, yes, I do think that you care if you've made it this far. To many happy returns.