A 3 Day Novel Contest Post-mortem: Thoughts After my 7th 3DNC


Great article about the 3 Day Novel competition by someone who is much better organized than I am. My strategy is: sign up late, dragging feet. Spend Saturday cleaning the house, dusting the cat, vacuuming my balcony. All thinking time. Dither some more. Write a bit. Hate myself. Sunday, get into it, write a few hours, feel awesomely proud of myself so go for a walk, eat. Lose track of where I was going. Mentally outline something. Type madly into the part of the night where I figure I’ve done myself proud. Monday, go like a madwoman, cursing mentally for postponing and procrastinating. Try and revise. Keep counting words as if they mattered instead of the plot. Suddenly, an ending pops out of the misty corners of my mind. Write like the pony express until I reach it. Reread and copy edit and meanwhile edit for inconsistencies (names and such) but am too bleary to do a PROPER editing job. Submit. Pat self on back. Collapse.

A Pilgrim in Narnia

3dnc survivalFor the 7th consecutive year I have been a contestant in the International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. This is literally the exercise of writing a full novel in 72 hours. No extensions, no extra time, no time outs. This is 3 days of pounding out the story that’s been in your imagination begging to get out.

This year I wrote a Middle Grade novel, a humorous story about an alien race that seeks to conquer Earth to steal our refrigeration technology so they can make banana splits. When they get to Earth, they slowly realize that they are actually very tiny—just three or four inches tall. Conquering Earth is going to be harder than they thought. Based on a facebook survey, I have named the book, Pants are Evil, and Other Lessons from Outer Space.

3DNC 2015: By the Numbers

Here is what 2015 looked like:

  • 17 chapters (plus…

View original post 2,890 more words

1 thought on “A 3 Day Novel Contest Post-mortem: Thoughts After my 7th 3DNC”

  1. Brenton Dickieson

    Thanks for the reblog! It was a funny intro you wrote here. I didn’t know cats could be so dusty! You are brief on your post-mortem, and they do say that brevity is the something of something. Or maybe it is wit that’s the key. I don’t remember, but you have it!
    One of the finalists I talked to got an honourable mention with 18,000 words. So it isn’t totally out of reach. One day I might try for a novella and see if I can win!

    Like

Comments are closed.