Day 2 - 3-Day Novel

Greetings, Dear Readers. I thought before once again descending into the madness that is 3-Day Novel that it couldn’t hurt to pop in and draft a little bloggity about the whole thing.

I can’t remember when I first stumbled across 3-Day Novel—maybe it was 6 or 7 years ago. I remember drafting a story that I’d intended to be a romantic comedy and it ended up being neither romantic nor a comedy. I remember halfway through (if that), I lost the wind in my sails and felt completely without direction for the thing. I wrote it sitting in a bedroom of an apartment with my computer sitting atop storage bins because I’d been living out of boxes since 2011. I was in deep pain at the time in a variety of capacities and thought writing a story about it might help; this reminds me of a pair of cuts on a live record by the peerless Belle Plaine—Moving on (Intro Frozen into Obscurity) and Frozen Into Obscurity—where she comments about being told writing can help with pain… and how, surprise surprise, writing helped with pain. Of course, my experience and Belle’s experience weren’t the same in context, but the feeling of a pain set so deep in the bones seems like it’s the same. Anyway, the story I wrote is lost to the winds of time; I have no idea where it ended up, no idea what I titled it, no idea where I saved it… and, maybe, that’s for the best. The action of writing it and then it being nowhere to be found feels like the ultimate closure; no opportunity to go back and read and dream and mourn and re-live moments and dwell in the emotionality of it all.

Over the last few years that I’ve participated in the 3-Day challenge, I feel like I’ve refined my process a lot more and gotten a lot stronger. Of course, in the ensuing six or seven years, I’ve grown as a writer, in general, and gotten better in many ways. My notes are better, my planning and plotting is tighter, though the ideas have only gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. All those things are great, but the 3-Day challenge has its own unique elements. Obviously, goal #1 is to make it through the weekend in one piece and with a complete story. Where I’ve tripped up in the past is losing sight of the scope of the project; realistically, I’ve got 36 hours to write and edit. I know some folks are probably writing 16 hours, 18 hours, and while there’s the outside chance I can do that, I don’t really think it’s possible for me. So, challenge #1 is taking my ideas and paring them down enough that they’re manageable. Challenge #2 is working through themes I want to touch on and filtering to a handful I can realistically get into in a significant capacity; what I don’t want to do is throw everything at the wall and be left with half-baked ideas, some nice thoughts without any depth, or cursory glimpses at really important matters. Challenge #3—and maybe this should be challenge #1, I don’t know—is to write something compelling and engaging and that people will want to read. I suppose writing something others will enjoy is always priority 1, even if I list other priorities, but the 3-Day challenge is a different animal; on that topic, I was speaking with someone at the yoga studio I go to, and he is a marathon runner and I asked him if his goal is finishing the race when he enters, or if he focuses on winning. He laughed at me and said, “Henry, every marathon there’s realistically a handful of people who have a chance of winning, and then there’s everyone else, so I just focus on finishing. Once I have my focus set on finishing, then I can start thinking about beating whatever my last completion time was. If I can beat my finishing time, then I can start thinking about ways to get better.” I really appreciated the candour and the sentiment really resonated with me. These challenges—while they do have a really wonderful grand prize and really cool opportunities that can come from participation—are things we shouldn’t overcomplicate: prepare as best you can, try your hardest, commit to the work, don’t let up when you doubt yourself, and, as I’ve heard the inimitable Damian Lillard say, let it fly.

So, Dear Reader, here I am letting it fly. Rest assured that, one way or another, you’ll see the fruits of my labour.