This morning I woke up just before 9 and realized that it's Saturday. Being unemployed for the last month or so, weekends don't really mean anything to me anymore. However, this is likely going to be the last Saturday for a long time that I will get to have this weekend feeling upon waking up.
I have decided to go for it, to throw myself headlong into the insanity that is the 3 Day Novel Writing Contest www.3daynovel.com. I'm going to attempt to write a novel. Carpe Diem and all that. (Robin Williams would be proud.) It starts next Saturday at 12:01 am and ends Monday at 11:59pm. I can only imagine the agony. And I have to be in class early Tuesday morning.
But the best way for me to write anything is under extreme pressure, and this contest is all about pressure. I have an idea for a plot, now I just need to fashion a sort of outline, determine characters, and choose a narrative perspective. First-person I'm thinking, or is that too obvious?
Anyway, this isn't exactly how I imagined myself writing a novel - I was thinking sometime in my forties, after a long life of cynical news writing, I would one day embark on a long journey through years of wrestling with my literary demons and writing, bit by bit, my magnum opus, which I would naturally love and hate and end up leaving and coming back to like a bad lover until I was in my sixties and could finally retire and find the time to finish "The Book" - but this three day thing seems so much nicer.
And it's a great excuse to drink unhealthy amounts of coffee! Nothing says "I'm writing a novel" like a big ugly mug of black brew.
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