The better half keeps reminding me to blog at least a couple of times a week. Unfortunately, I’ve been working on an epic blog post, the one where I give newly appointed New York City School’s Chanceloress (because I’m sure she’ll do a ladylike job) a piece of my mind. This could take years.
So please stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I’ll be back shortly with something about self-publishing, or the recent household decision to give up cable, or why since there are no death panels we need to make sure we have loved ones who will shoot us when the time comes.
If you’d like, please leave a comment, relevant or not. You can also suggest a topic . We could start a new thing: Blog-Improv where you supply a theme and I’ll come up with an on the spot post.
For the past 3 years, I’ve been booked Labor Day weekend — no picnics, barbecues, hikes or drives to the country. You’ll find me out on my balcony (weather permitting) with my laptop and a cup of weak coffee by my side, churning out a mini-masterpiece for the International 3 Day Novel Contest. It’s a simple premise — start and complete a novel over the 72 hour holiday weekend.
On the honor system. It’s Canadian.
The first year I entered, I did hope to achieve the ultimate prize: publication. The first prize is a book contract with a small press. They don’t announce the winners till January. I drove myself nuts waiting. It was a more intense experience than any previous contest I’d ever entered before. The reason now seems clear. This isn’t a normal situation where you enter using something that’ you wrote long ago. The 3-Day demands that you create something new and create it under intense pressure. You are allowed to write an outline in advance though mine have proven useless once I started. One emerges at the end with a sense that one has been through, if not an ordeal, then at least an intense ritualistic experience.
In my case, I’m not the only one going through it. My better half has been a devoted partner, acting as a caregiver, cook, sounding board, personal assistant , and massage therapist. He’s also signed off on the “affirmation” statement that the novel was started and completed within the time frame.
This year life issues were getting in the way of the creative flow. Ten days before the big day, I had no clear idea about what I even wanted to write. The BH demanded I show him some outlines and pick a plot so that I would not spend the first few hours staring in horror at blank screen. I came up with two ideas — one was a sort of As I Lay Dying set in present day Queens, the other a strangely lighthearted lad-lit tale of a youngish man getting romantic advice from an old man/ghost haunting his basement apartment. Thank goodness, he advised me to go for the latter.
Have I ever won? Not exactly. But winning isn’t everything; in fact, it’s not even relevant. I’d compare it to entering the New York City Marathon. It’s much more about personal best and achievement than it is about getting first place. (Though it would be nice if like a marathon they gave prizes in categories. I’d settle for best novel in the under 25k words category by a woman over 40.) However, that’s not how I felt the first time I entered.
My first entry, The Death Trip came in at a bit above 20,000 words, barely a novella. They say size doesn’t matter, but then they say it might be a factor. I didn’t even make the shortlist. My better-half who loved the story, is still bitter. But here’s what I did get out of it: I got a novella draft in need of little (but not much) revision. I not only got it quick, but I got it with a story that I might never have bothered with otherwise. I learned that I could crank out something coherent in 3 days. I also used the obsession I developed waiting for the results as the basis for a story I told at the Narativ Story Workshop which was filmed, and then used by 3Day on their website.
I revised the novella and realized after a couple of rejections there wasn’t a big market for it at that length. I had no desire to either shorten or expand it, so I decided to put it out as an e-book. To date I’ve had over 1,800 downloads.
My effort the second time around, Hungry Ghosts, actually made the short-list. It too barely made it to 20k, but I fell in love with the story and although other projects have gotten in the way, I’m still working on expanding it to a full novel length. With its combination of erotica and horror, I’m hoping it may even be commercially viable. I’m sure it never would have been written without the contest. All I had of it before Labor Day was a first line (which I wound up changing), a premise that wasn’t completely thought out, and a list of characters.
This year, I promised myself I would somehow get up to 27k, and somehow made it to just that point. Of course I’m still hoping that the third time is the charm, but even if I don’t make this year’s short list, I’m still feeling high from the writing. As a way to jump start a first draft, the 3 Day can’t be beat.
It hasn’t gotten easier over time. I had a tough first night or more literally morning this go-round, but the spirit of the thing kicked in — the idea that in some way, I’d been “preparing,” anticipating this special weekend, reserving it for a purpose. I felt like I had nothing to lose by continuing, so there was no reason not to push on to the end.
I wound up with something unlike anything I’d written before — a lighthearted view of gentrification that almost celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of people who buy and develop property, a romance that might even work, a happy ending!
The process allows writers to take risks and encourages them to follow Elmore Leonard’s maxim and “skip the boring parts” because there’s simply no time to write them. Whatever I think I learned getting my MFA is useless. More useful is the storytelling technique practiced at Narativ. Although that method was designed for oral storytelling of true stories, the method of focusing on “what happened” and not explaining it, kept me from getting lost in my story and forced me to keep going, even when I wasn’t sure of where.
Thanks to the contest, I now have one novella out in the world attracting a little bit of attention, and I have two projects that need development and expansion, so I don’t have to face the dreaded blank page. I have confidence in my ability to crank out material under pressure and I’ve further honed my skills. The contest allows you to turn your home into a writer’s retreat at a much lower cost than actually traveling to one. It costs $50 to enter, waived if you got a prize or honorable mention the previous year.
So to anyone who writes fiction or has even thought about writing fiction mark your calendar now and start thinking about the book you’ll be writing Labor Day Weekend 2011 (thinking is not against the rules).
Here’s the clip of me talking about my first 3- Day experience:
Apparently people all over the country are upset about some pro forma decision made by a local community board in my town not to give landmark status to an old coat factory and to instead permit a religious organization to build a Y type community center. You wouldn’t think this would have a big effect outside of the immediate neighborhood, but I guess Manhattan really is the center of the universe or something.
It was back in the 1980’s. I’m not sure of the year, and if I were, I wouldn’t tell you because it would make me sound ancient, but it was sometime before we all had PC’s, before even the big boxy cell phones.
In those days there were still companies like Wang that made one-function computers called “word processors,” and the people who worked on these machines were also called “word processors,” and the ones who did this only on occasion while imagining they were destined for better things were called “temps.”
Yes, dear reader, I was a temp.
My specialty was Wang, and though I wasn’t the world’s fastest typist (that means keyboarder children), I was good enough to sometimes join the elite who worked graveyard shift. Graveyard was almost exclusively at large firms.The pace could be quick, but often there was lots of downtime waiting for lawyers and paralegals to make their changes. Sometimes the computer “system” would mysteriously go “down” and people would sit around for hours on some corporate client’s dime. There were perks like free food, and many companies would pay for a car service either to or from the office.There was also a fat hourly pay differential.
I wasn’t getting a lot of night work, so I decided to expand my skills by learning another word processing program. This one could be done on a regular computer like IBM and was called, Wordstar. Unlike Wang — an ancestor programming-wise of Word — Wordstar was command, not menu driven. I’d taught myself using a book in a friend’s office and was good enough to pass the temp agency test.
My first Wordstar assignment was at a small firm located in midtown on the 19th floor of the Chrysler Building. There was no car service offered, so I drove in from pre-hipster Williamsburg in my 1972 Dodge Dart and easily found a space good till 8:00 am when I’d be out. This was not like my Wang gigs. I arrived and found a tiny office with just one other temp working who was about to go off shift.Like me she was somewhere in her twenties.Unlike me she was African-American a bit zoftig, with braids. She immediately started telling me how she was really a writer and had had a meeting with Spike Lee. She kept calling him Spike and was very excited. She didn’t ask me about my own ambitions or dreams, and I remember thinking that she was either insane or soon to be famous. Strangely, as it would turn out, the latter was true and this was in fact an encounter with greatness.
The lawyer came in, and Suzan-Lori-Parks left. He wasn’t so old either and explained the assignment to me. He’d be bringing in more copy and edits throughout the evening. It was a very important contract and due in the morning. I got started. He’d come in with more stuff, kind of nervous. Sometimes I’d walk down the hall to where he was working to ask a question. Often he was in the bathroom.This was not uncommon. Lawyers working the night shift during the 1980’s seemed to spend a lot of time in the bathroom and often emerged with new found energy, but they tended to have a very short fuse.
At some point, I had to do some repaging and I ran into a problem. The problem was that I was completely without a clue.I had no idea what to do. It was the middle of the night and I couldn’t think of anyone who could help. Well, one person maybe, a friend who was a professional word processing supervisor, but I didn’t have my phone book with me, and I couldn’t get an outside line anyway, and this was before cell phones and the Internet and he probably would have been sound asleep.
The lawyer came in more on edge because it was now getting very late. I stalled. He left. I tried a couple of things but couldn’t figure it out. I went back to look for him, ready to confess my incompetence, and scared for my safety. He was in the men’s room again.
I looked down the hall at the office I had come from. I looked at the men’s room that the lawyer would emerge from any second. I looked at the silent elevators which required a key that I didn’t have and the lawyer in the men’s room did, and then I looked at the emergency fire exit door.
I opened the door. No alarm sounded. I made my way down one flight of stairs after another. Strangely, I emerged on the street almost right in front of the Dart. I got in and drove home as dawn broke in New York City.
For a while I screened the calls as they came through the answering machine. I didn’t hear anything from the temp agency till about two weeks later. I picked up. They wanted to send me out on a job. I told all to the very nice counselor who hadn’t heard about my disgraceful behavior.
She replied, “Well, Freed Frank requested you and that’s Wang. We won’t send you on anymore Wordstar.”
I don’t know what happened to that lawyer when his document wasn’t ready that morning. Maybe they got Suzan-Lori Parks back to save the day.
My better half sent an oldie but goody around. It’s a piece from The Onion from 2007 referencing the ethnic and religious diversity of Queens (the borough of dreams), relevant today, especially given Mayor Bloomberg’s recent eloquent speech in which he gave a shout out to the Flushing Remonstrance in his explanation of why New Yorkers support the building of a community center and mosque in lower-Manhattan.
So happy weekend to all however you celebrate and enjoy the links.