A Novel Approach (To Me)

I’ve had a few days to recover from the contest and time to digest what I’ve learned.  I’m going to attempt to create my own survival guide here.  My list can’t compare to the excellent guide on the 3 Day Novel website, but here are my thoughts:

For The Writer

1. Make an Outline! Some people can write without one, most will fail. When you are under pressure and you can’t get the words to flow, your outline will save you.  If you don’t have an outline you’ll spend FAR too much time thinking and not enough time writing.  Either your word count or your story will suffer…possibly both. I know this from experience. Further, an outline will give you the freedom to write scenes out of sequence if you get stuck. This can help free up the creative flow.
2. Do your research BEFORE you start writing: If you have an outline, you should know what research you need to do before you start.  The same thing goes for characters.  Know them and their motivations before you sit down to write.
3. Get into the writing and stay there! Don’t stop to look up the spelling of a word or to search for a synonym in your thesaurus.  Highlight the word, or underline it, and come back to it after the story is done. Once you are finished, you can back track and fix it. Trust me, every time you leave the story, it will be harder to get your flow back.  Stay with the characters as much as you possibly can.  At the end of the weekend, you shouldn’t remember what happened on twitter, or on-line, or in your house, or with your friends.  You should only remember the story.
4. Shut off the Internet! Set yourself goals of specific periods of time that you will write without stopping. Some set a goal of 5 hours, others as little as 1 hour at a stretch. My magic number is 3 hours.  I set an alarm and write without stopping until it goes off. I then allow myself 30 minutes for a break to eat, pee, check twitter, and do research (if something has come up that I didn’t catch in the outline)
5. Sleep! Get at least 5 hours of sleep each night or you will crash and burn on Day 3.  There may be times where you keep going into the night because the muse is with you and it must be written. That’s fine…go for it!  However, if you stay awake for 72 hours, what you write in the last 24 hours will be ridiculous and incoherent.  I know this from experience too.
6. Stop half way through your sentence when you take a break! When you return to your work, it will be easier to get the flow going again. For some reason, a period is like a stop sign to me. If I come back and try to start writing, it’s almost as bad as starting with the first sentence all over again.
7. Eat! In particular, have quick easy meals that can be cooked in under 10 minutes.  My favorites were of the frozen bagged meals in minutes kind. That doesn’t mean you have to eat crap.  I had portobello mushroom and asparagus tortellini and the like. Delicious and nutritious.  For snacks, keep some high energy low glycemic snacks close by and eat every 2 hours or so…even if it’s just a small handful of almonds.  Bananas…another great food.  Sweet and full of potassium!
8. Have a private space to write!  This is critical.  If you are in the living room with your family, there will be too many distractions.  I have an office at home with a door I can close. On Labour Day weekend when I’m writing, they may only come into that room to bring me food and water. That’s it.  It’s not important where you write…just that you be alone and relatively comfortable when you do it.
9. Set goals! The 3 Day Novel Contest has a great breakdown of where you should be at the end of each day.  Read it. Then set reasonable goals for yourself.  Set a minimum goal and a maximum goal.  Shoot for the maximum goal but be happy if you can only get to the minimum. Submissions for this contest can run from 12,000 words to 50,000 words.  The average submission is 100 pages or about 25,000 words. Your minimum goal should be close to that…though 20,000 words will get you that 100 pages if you write lots  of dialogue.  I recommend setting your low goal at 8,000 words per day and your high goal at 15,000 words per day based on what was being tweeted during the contest.  This seems to be a reasonable target.  Don’t give up if you miss a target, either keep writing until you hit it or get some sleep and increase your goal for the next day. Set a goal to finish by 6pm on Sunday.  You will want some editing time to go back and fix those highlighted words and re-read for plot holes before midnight if you can.
10. Do what works for you!  If all else fails, throw all these tips out of the window and just do what works for you.

For Friends and Spouses

1. Please don’t make plans or invite people over to visit.  Please also divert any well-wishers who show up unexpectedly. Time is precious while we are writing and every interruption will make it exponentially harder for us to finish.
2. Please slip food under the door on a regular basis so we don’t starve.
3. Please don’t comment on how bad we smell. We don’t have time to shower (see point #1 above)
4. Please don’t come in to kiss us, hug us, or otherwise tell us how proud you are that we are doing something so amazing (see point #1).  We’ll be happy to accept your accolades after the contest is over.
5. When we wander aimlessly about the house looking for something we’ve lost but don’t recall what it was…just put us to bed and set the alarm for say…4am. Also, please put us to bed if we start talking to inanimate objects…even more important if they start to talk back.
6. Please don’t plan any activity for yourself between 6pm and 10pm on Day 3. We need you to read the manuscript and point out an gaping plot holes, spelling mistakes and so forth.
7. Please remember that this is a first draft written in 3 days. Be nice. Do not say ANYTHING other than how wonderful the manuscript is.  You can of course, provide us with the information requested (see point #6)…just be REALLY nice about it. The manuscript is supposed to be crappy. That’s what re-writes and edits are for.
8. Don’t ask us if we think we will win. We don’t have a magic 8 ball. However, it goes without saying that we WANT to win.
9. Spouses: don’t ask where the children’s (socks, pants, books, toys, games, cell phones, etc) are.  Keep looking, you’ll find them. Refer to point #1.
10. Understand that we truly appreciate everything you do for us while we sequester ourselves over the weekend.  We’ll thank you afterwards (refer to point #1)

Overall, it’s the most gruelling weekend I spend each year.  I don’t know how many more years I’ll do it.  I suspect I’ll keep doing it until I’m in a position to write full time (or at least more than I can right now).  This is because it provides me with a piece of writing that I can continue to work on over the coming year.  I would love to hit the short list this year, but even if I don’t, just having a manuscript I can expand is well worth the $50 and the crazy weekend!

Ahhhh…relief. I survived.  My entry is done (or as done as it can be, all things considered).  I’m happy with how much I completed.  My entry falls short of the 30K to 40K goal I had set for myself, but not by much.  I did hit my page goal. I wanted to be over 100 pages and I made it to 107.  I’m exhausted. I can hardly type this post because my brain keeps doing funky things…like spelling words wrong and jumping my eyeballs all over the screen, and making me think that I can hear things that aren’t there.  It happens…especially at the end of day 3.

I will sleep well tonight, filled with (insert word that means happy and satisfied cause I can’t remember what it is).

Congratulations to all the AMAZING people who participated this year…especially those who were on twitter.  You have each achieved something extraordinary…and honest to goodness manuscript in only 3 days!  *cheering* *happy dance*

Relief is setting in.  I’m at 23,044 with only the Epilogue left to write.  This has been the craziest 3 Day Novel contest yet.  Wow!

I’m tired…but not as tired as I thought I’d be at this point. I’m excited because I’m only about an hour away from the end.  My eyes are exhausted and keep twitching across the computer screen.  The tips of my fingers are numb and keep hitting the wrong keys. The desire to puke that I had last night, has not hit me yet today.  In fact, I think a bit of euphoria is setting in because I’m so close…

I have managed to fit in the “baby’s arm with an apple”.  Finally. Challenges are all covered and completed. Actually, it was kind of fun and I might let my friends torture me again next year. I can’t imagine what the 3 day people will think when they read this manuscript. LOL!

I’m going to push to the end and then take a break.  I think I’ll print it and walk away from it for an hour and give my eyes a rest. Maybe a nice hot bath. Then I’ll come back to edit with, hopefully, a clear head.  This will be the first time I’ve actually had time to edit.  The past few years I’ve been writing until the very end trying to just get the bare bones of the story down.

Gotta write…

I’m tired this morning but am hoping the almonds (brain food) I ate will kick in soon and make me sharp. Hope is a commonly used word at this point of the contest, as in: I hope I make my word count today (I missed yesterday’s word count of 20,000 by a little over 1,000), I hope my plot will make sense, I hope I can actually finish this thing, I hope my eyes don’t fall out of my head, I hope I don’t pass out from exhaustion, I hope I don’t puke.  You know…the usual.

I stayed up late trying to push for my word count and am not sure if I’ll pay for it today in edits and deletes.  At a certain point, the tree outside my window started giving me story tips.  I’m pretty sure that’s not going to turn out to be a good thing.

I have a lot to write. I’m going to ignore the Internet more than usual and go back to writing in 3 hour increments. I had a kajillion interruptions yesterday, but I’m locking down in the cave today. I hope to write at least 7,000 and hopefully 12,000 words by 6pm.  that would leave me 6 hours to fill in details, edit and clean up any issues with plot.  Oh. And I still need to add a baby’s arm holding an apple. I just googled it.  Yep, ewwwww. This might be tricky.

Wish me luck!

Just a quick update for now.  My word count is lower than I’d like again, but I’m not discouraged. It’s primarily because of interruptions.  My hubby rode 40K for Cancer today in honour of his Mom and Dad who both died of Cancer. I wasn’t going to miss him ride across that finish line today–not even for this contest.  I’m so proud of him.  He finished the race in 1 hour and 21 minutes despite the fact that he was riding into a 25km/hr head wind.

I feel great right now.  I just finished eating and warming up my coffee.  The writing I have done today is stuff that I’m really happy with.  I’ve hit that spot where the story is truly coming alive for me and I have a hard time leaving it.  That’s a good sign and, barring another interruption this afternoon of friends who are in the area for a couple of hours on their way home, the word count should start to compound. I hope I don’t have to write too late tonight to make up for lost ground.

Here are the things that I’m finding are working for me so far:

• Ignoring my word count as much as possible and just staying with the story.  The word count becomes more important to me later in the day when I know I need to hit a target before I can sleep.
• Stopping mid-sentence when I get up to have a break.  Surprisingly, this is making it so much easier to start again afterwards. Yep, I’ve resorted to psychological tricks.
• Full screen mode…it’s a god send. It makes all the difference for me.
• Having a good outline. This rocks and is the reason I’m already doing so much better than prior years. In past years, I’ve only had a few notes on characters and setting and I let the story go from there.  It works for some people but it doesn’t work for me.
• Writing in chunks.  This is the first year I’ve truly disconnected from Twitter and the internet for hours at a time to write. It doesn’t feel painful because I allow myself a half hour after each 3 hour chunk to catch up with Twitter and the chat room.  I can’t imagine disconnecting for the weekend, so this has been a good compromise.

As an update on my challenges…nope, I haven’t yet been able to incorporate a baby’s arm holding and apple (remember, there can be no baby, just a baby’s arm per Simon’s challenge)–but I think I’ll get that done soon. I’m thinking it may be part of cover art the MC sees in a bookstore that is one of the settings in the book…or perhaps she’ll see only part of a tattoo…I’m not sure yet.  I’m still hoping I’ll come up with something a bit more clever than that.

Back to writing…

Tracking the hours of the contest is really freaking me out.  Hour 30 of 72 means I’m almost 1/2 through but only 1/3 of my my word count is achieved. I’m also freaked out by other people’s word counts and almost find it discouraging.  Yet, I have to admit, seeing that others had reached 13K-15K did make me push to hit 10K. I guess there is that benefit.

I’ve set a goal for 15,000 words today but again, will settle for 10,000. The writing should be easier now that the story is coming together, right?

In the end, I’ll be happy if I hit the 100 page mark (25,000 words or so). That’s better than I’ve ever done before (I hit about 30 pages the first year and about 70 pages last year).  Anything over 100 pages I’ll count as gravy.

Last night I hit the wall and had to go to bed at midnight.  The water flow in the fish tank started to sound like people talking to me. That’s not good.  I slept for a good 5.5 hours last night and am feeling refreshed.  The water in the fish tank is back to making…well, water noises again.  I can’t tell you how relieved I am.

Now I’m off to write…

Ok, I’m grateful. I’ve hit my word count goal of 10,000 words.  10,166 as of 11pm tonight.  Since then, I shuffled around the internet checking in with Twitter, the chat rooms. I’m exhausted. My fingertips are numb. My brain is mush. I think I’m hearing things that aren’t there. It’s time for sleep…

Another two hours of writing and my word count is starting to pick up.  I averaged almost 1000 words/per hour and the word count is now at 7145.  I’m getting tired though. I really only have another 3 hours in me I think, but I may need to push beyond that if I want to hit 10,000 words today.

I’m drinking lots of water and had to turn off the Thunderstorm music because the rain kept making me have to go pee.

Good news, I incorporated the piercing.  Now I just have to get that baby arm figured out.

Ok, back to writing…

Ok, here we are at the midpoint of the first day.  As of 13 hours, I’ve written for a full 6 hours, slept for 5 and spent 2 hours on things like gathering food (lunch is a portebello mushroom tortellini with asparagus frozen meal), getting coffee, peeing, stretching, thinking, research, blogging and Twitter.

As of this moment, I have barely 4000 words written so, according to my goals below, I’ve only written half of what I should have at this point.  I’m hoping to make up for it later.  In the end, I’ll settle for hitting 10,000 words before I sleep and making up some of the word count tomorrow or Monday.

I’ve moved from coffee to water because my eyes are starting to twitch and my pee is bright yellow.  It appears I’m over stimulated and  under hydrated.  That could also explain the pounding headache. I just swallowed two extra strenght advil which should help.

My other problem. I can’t write without music and I can’t write with any music that has lyrics.  I don’t think I have enough classical and new age music on this computer.  I may have to download something from iTunes to get me through this.  Sadly, I could not find a single iTunes Essentials list called “music to write a Gothic story to”.  Man, you’d think they’d have that covered!

I’m going to eat my food before it gets cold and get back to writing.

Ok, the first three hour stretch is over and I’m taking a break for a few minutes to stretch, catch up on Twitter and blog.  My word count sucks! Only 2000 words in 3 hours. I need to more than double that pace. The funny thing is, on any NORMAL day, I’d be happy with 2000 words…but this is NOT a normal day, or a normal weekend and I need to get faster.  I’m always slower to start…that’s the hardest part for me.  My hope is that, as I get further into the story, the writing will speed up.

See those notes? They are all about welding (welding torches, sticks, gloves, helmets and a bit of education on the compatibility of metals and creating an electrical circuit).  My wonderful and “experienced in welding” neighbor just spend 20 minutes with me explaining how one goes about welding a sculpture together. Good details to have since it turns out that my main character is trying to make a living making scrap metal sculptures.  Not an easy thing to do it appears…

I still haven’t sorted out the piercing of the private bits challenge yet…all I know is that I don’t think it will be her 70 year old aunt who gets one. But, who can say for sure…stranger things have happened in a 3 day novel. LOL!!  I also haven’t sorted out the baby arm holding an apple challenge. Remember, I can’t actually show a baby.  Meh, I’m not discouraged…I’m not discouraged…I’m not discouraged (my new Mantra).

Now we return to our regularly scheduled programming…<bleeeeeeeeeeep>