3-Day Novel coming up

I am preparing for the madness to begin/continue tomorrow as I embark on the 3-Day Novel challenge once again. My project last year, Stone Overcoat, ended up just short of 30,000 words. I think the final count was 27,733. Most entries run in at around 100 pages, so that’s always a challenge. It’s a lot of writing—~33 pages a day—and while there is a degree of physical challenge in the project, insofar as it’s demanding on the fingers and forearms and back and all that, it is obviously much more of a psychological challenge. Yes, there is a creative challenge with respect to needing to cook up the work and needing to figure out a story and imagine the people and the places and the stuff and the things, but I find it is harder for me to sit there in the moment(s) and just make it all happen. The last few years I’ve done the challenge I have ended up questioning everything about myself, questioning whether or not any of IT is worth it, whether or not the illusory existence we lead has any meaning and whether or not the illusion should matter at all. I usually tell myself about halfway through that I’m a failure who is undeserving of success of any kind, and should just quit. As you can see, the 3-Day Novel challenge is always an uplifting and affirming experience for me. The psychological piece challenging for me, because I am caught between the push/pull of DISCIPLINE AND TOUGHNESS and compassion and kindness. For example, if I want to finish—and, to be clear, it is about finishing, not about winning; once you start thinking about winning, it’s all over—I need to be disciplined in my approach. I need to make sure I am sleeping properly, that I am eating properly, that I am being focused and committed to the times I need to write and not letting myself off the hook when I want to quit because I am being a baby; however, I also need to be compassionate and know that driving myself past the brink of madness doesn’t do much at all for anyone, and the romanticized notion of CREATIVE INSANITY is, largely, a crock.

There is an element of stress to this year’s challenge that I didn’t face last year. Last year, during the midpoint of plague, or maybe it was the beginning of plague, I can’t remember—the Plague Years all seem the same to me—I had a dream of what I wanted to write and I had a good idea of how I wanted to approach things. It didn’t hurt that I had the gift of time through it all. This year has been a different story. The last few months have been challenging in their own ways, with my mind seeming to always be drifting elsewhere and focusing on different elements of creation; for example, Love Poems took up a lot of the early portion of 2021, and then the building and launching of TheHenryMudd took a lot of time and energy because I was figuring out all of this. 2020, Year 1 of Plague, was also a very good year for creative and long form writing for me, too; my upcoming release, Detective Story, that will see the light of day towards the end of 2021 (I hope…) took a lot of energy to finish up, as did Stone Overcoat and Saint of Whales, and I wrote a fantasy book, Moonkill, that will see release in 2022 (I think…). So, 2020, as you can see, Dear Reader, left me a little devoid of novel-length writing motivation. Lots of ideas, lots of plans, and lots of great building energy, but I needed a break. All of this is, to say, I haven’t really done a goddamn thing to prepare for the Challenge.

A few days ago, I was speaking with someone I respect a great deal and we were talking about confidence and writing, and he said sometimes he feels like he’s running way ahead, legs pumping, with endless air in his lungs and other times it’s limping along with a bullet in the leg, bleeding with each step. That’s kind of how I feel right now with the challenge looming before me. However, on Wednesday before I went to work I sat down with a coffee and a blank page and started scratching out ideas about themes. Most were overly dramatic—WINTER OF MY LIFE, for example—but as I made notes and scratched away, I started to get a clearer picture of what I want to write, in broad strokes at least. Now, to be very clear, I have no idea about characters, no real idea about plot, and no real sense of how it will all unfold, but, as the kids say, who cares. I’m probably breaking all the best practices for completion—I have a yoga practice Saturday morning, and I work at the studio on Sunday, for example—but I don’t care. As I mentioned earlier, discipline is necessary for completion, but that also means being disciplined in staying away from the work. And if I end up not finishing in time? Hey, then I’ve got another novella completed and there are worse outcomes.