On your marks, get set . . . write!
The challenge: Write a novel in just 3 days
It’s called the 3-Day Novel Contest and many compare it to a wild roller-coaster ride with all its ups, downs, curves and, yes, sometimes even screams. The annual competition, which attracted 590 writers this year — is a 72-hour writing marathon with the best (fiction) work being published by Vancouver based 3-Day Books and distributed by Arsenal Pulp Press. “It can be very, very manic,” says this year’s winner, Kayt Burgess, originally from Elliot Lake, Ont., now living in Aurora. “I had moments of panic. Sometimes I’d be so stressed I’d just have to get up and walk around.” She even admits with a laugh that at one point in the campaign she locked herself in the washroom and let out a private, primal scream. But in the end it was all worth it with Burgess, a 30-year-old music teacher and opera singer, calling it an “incredible ” experience. The result was a short novella (about 100 pages) titled Heidegger Stairwell that revolves around an Ontario indie rock band of the same name and music journalist Evan Strocker. The group thinks the writer has left too much of himself in his manuscript, letting his experiences as a transgender man and his romance with the lead guitarist eclipse the story of the band. What ensues is a fight for the truth. Melissa Edwards, one of the organizers of the Vancouver-based contest, says the event started in 1977 with a group of writers who knew that some of the best work in history was rattled off with a few great ideas and a couple of days. It was just a lark, but the group thought it would be fun to see the results if participants were given a three-day deadline — it’s always held on the Labour Day weekend — and the competition has been handed down to different publishing houses and organizations since. “It’s a lot of fun for most people,” says Edwards, who entered the contest herself in 2002. “It was my first attempt at fiction. It was terrible.” She says some years the competition has drawn close to 700 writers but, sadly, it hasn’t yielded any masterpieces — yet. Participants are mainly from Canada and the U.S., with the bal- ance from Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The contest is open to everyone but is most popular with amateurs and new writers.
Writers work from the comfort of their own homes on an honour system.
Edwards says participants would only be cheating themselves out of the experience if there was any jiggery-pokery, and that judges can tell when someone doesn’t commit to the spirit of the contest (by submitting a previously finished work, for example).
But writers — who are permitted to work in any genre or any mix of genres and on any subject — are allowed to develop ideas and an outline prior to the contest.
Burgess, who studied classical music at Western University in London, Ont., and also holds a master’s degree in creative writing, says she had a “kernel” of an idea before she started, but it’s still a lot of work.
She’s been writing for a while and is very disciplined, often working four or five days a week in seven- or eight-hour stretches.
Burgess says she’s aware of all the traps one can get into, all the “dark alleys” where the story is going nowhere, but it still happens — you just have to make sure you know how to get out of them.