My adventures with the 3-day Novel Writing Contest

Who doesn’t have a wonderful idea lurking around inside their head? Well it’s one thing to have the dream and it is another to actually do it. Not necessarily become a best selling authour on the book signing circuit with regular appearances on Oprah, but a person – a single individual – who has taken the time and focus to JUST ACHIEVE THE TASK.

Witness the descent into madness which is the tale of my latest effort. All times are approximate to preserve my sense of dignity in adversity:

Thursday, September 2, 2010 – 4:15 pm :: Registered and gave ‘em my $50. Tomorrow I write my outline, Saturday – Monday I write my novel and Tuesday I REST. I should buy gin too.

Friday, September 3, 2010 – 12:30 pm :: “Writers aren’t exactly people…they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Friday, September 3, 2010 – 12:45 pm :: OMG I just spit my coffee laughing about a writer dealing with an airshow… condolences. Me? I have puking cats.

Friday, September 3, 2010 – 2:30 pm :: This first-timer in VancouverEast is FREAKING OUT. Oh the busy-work I’ve concocted! Is there a hashtag for twitter? I’ve been seeing #3DN put not many folks using it. I think when it all gets rolling I’ll need short bursts of distraction so that I don’t get LOST writing more than 140 characters of something other than my book…

Friday, September 3, 2010 – 3:30 pm :: I’m stocked up on all kinds of Asian food. Sticky rice, BBQ pork buns (steamed and baked), sesame balls… finger food… Am I the only one?

Friday, September 3, 2010 – 3:30 pm :: OK… this outlining thing is not proceeding as planned. Think a walk in the sunshine and a moment of hanging with a friend might help.

Friday, September 4, 2010 – 8:45 pm :: Is anyone else in doing this piece of insanity? 20,000 words a day? What was I thinking?

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 10:30 am :: What I *should* be doing is working on my 3-day novel. What I *am* doing is updating Mayhem/NubianImp events on the W2 Community site….

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 3:30 pm :: Why am I trying to write with new software?! What am I crazy?! Need beer or love or something. Waaay behind and still determined.

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 3:30 pm :: Checking out fellow writers on twitter. Who cares if the damned thing makes any kind of sense? I can clean it up during NaNoWriMo

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 3:30 pm :: You don’t do 3DNC because you value your sanity.. Totally an adventure for the bold and stoopid. #realization #procrastination

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 4:00 pm :: I could have used that back up warning about 90 minutes ago when I discovered I had deleted a section. OOPS

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 7:00 pm :: I’m finding myself getting slowed down by fact checking. But that’s what you get for choosing a history piece! Not to self: editing is for later.

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 7:00 pm :: Using Storyist to write is both very good and very bad. What I need is a colour printer so I can tape colour pictures on the wall

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 1:30 am :: Took a little time today to go through various photo banks and find images that might represent important people, places and things. It’s helped INCREDIBLY. I feel more focussed and inspired…

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 1:30 am :: Next stage of writing 1:20 am… took a little time to have dinner with friends, watch an episode of Spartacus and to read a book.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 2:15 am :: LOL!!! That’s hilarious! I’ve just realized that this book is actually about 300 pages. worth of material… How to focus and condense..

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 2:30 am :: OK. Did a tour around twitter & FB to see what other writers are doing. Feeling more inspired to keep typing. NaNoWriMo would be easier

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 4:00 am :: <email to Storyist support> have tried and suffered all day. I really need help. Your software keeps eating my work. I have it set for auto-back up every five minutes (which is marginally helpful since it doesn’t create discrete files) HOWEVER, when I have lost work – as I just did for the third (?) time today, there is no file form five minutes ago! All I am finding is the file from over an hour ago that I manually saved! I have been doing manual backups as well. So I have one from… oh… nine hours ago. I try to hit “undo”… but it doesn’t actually seem to undo anything. Not typing, not the addition of new elements (sections, chapters, charaters), not rearrangements of material. I’m at a total loss. I could cry. I’ve just lost about 1,700 word in this last go. I don’t know what to do! I’ve BEEN rewiting (and getting good stuff) but I really don’t have the time. This ain’t NaNoWriMo or a casual thing you know! I’ve come back to this software after it ate my ENTIRE manscript of another book. I chalked that up to my not backing up properly. This… This is definately not me and now I’m wondering about my previous work. HELP!!!

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 4:15 am :: <note to Storyist FB page> OMG… I’m doing 3DNC and this program keeps eating my work! It’s not saving every five minutes. The undo feature won’t undo. And chapters are going sideways… I could cry. I really could.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 4:30 am :: (*&#*%#_()$&_(*&@…. I could weep. Clearly being this tired is working against me. Just lost the last hour of work.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 5:30 am :: Please feel free to call me. My guess is that I’ll still be up writing! with much hope, Kona

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 10:30 am :: Four hours of sleep and here I go again! I think I’d like to try writing in bed. Today’s plan is 2hr chunks. OK. Coffee!

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 10:45 am :: Settled in for the next stage. Decided on spare bed instead. Just realized that coffee is not enough. Maybe water?! Food?!

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 10:45 am :: OMFG… reading 3DNC on twitter has be laughing and laughing and laughing!! The cats are now looking at me like I’ve lost my mind…

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 10:45 am :: OK… it’s all most of us can do to just write our damned books. Some gal is actually blogging? Is that part of the story?

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 11:00 am :: I’ve asked my pals (via FB) who are at a massive dim sum gathering, to get takeout, drive by, and toss it onto the patio.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 11:15 am :: @3DayNovel – why are you distracting us with newspaper articles? **grumblz** … better go find out what this is all about…

Sunday, September 5, 2010 –11:30 pm :: Someone pls come convince my polydactyl cat to bring me that reference book over, there or give me a massage, or type while I dictate.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 12:15 pm :: Sweet lord gawd help my poor aching ass…

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 12:30 pm :: If I could throw my laptop into a room with a million monkeys and have them write this novel for me… I would totally do it.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 12:45 pm :: OK… this ain’t happening. Writing more tweets than story. Time for a break to the great outdoors. Maybe read this nascent book?

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 1:00 pm :: YAY! Just reached my target word count – for yesterday. Only 5hrs to the real life dinner party. There’s no way I can write that much.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 1:30 pm :: Dear cats: if I feed and water you will you find my laptop’s power cord before the battery fails in 20 minutes and STOP WHINING?!

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 2:00 pm :: Despair as I return to the *brilliant* (BRILLIANT I TELL YOU BRILLIANT!) scene I lost half of in the wee hours this AM. I feel bipolar.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 2:30 pm :: OMG… The spinning wheel of death. (Really) The whole machine is locked. I was on a roll. Hard close. Loose bowels. When did I save?

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 2:30 pm ::  <reply from Storyist on FB> Hi Kona, Please send details to the support address and we’ll investigate right away.

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 4:15 pm ::  <response to Storyist on FB> Yeah well, I did that last night (including phone number) with no response. Resolved to me more careful today. While editing story sheets I got the spinning wheel of death. No. I hadn’t saved in a couple hours. No I hadn’t backed up in a couple hours. Damned those writing streaks! Rebooted and the last version it claimed to have was from 5:50 or so am this morning. The level of my despair is intense. Bad enough I lost that *brilliant* scene from last night. But to loose the limp reconstruction and my new work too?

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 4:30 pm :: HEAR MY PAIN AND *LEARN* PEOPLE : Don’t trust the writing software Storyist with your precious words. I’ve lost 1000s of words thinking I was just using it stoopidly. But the spinning wheel of death on my computer is the last straw. Anyone got ativan? **weep*

Sunday, September 5, 2010 – 4:45 pm :: One hour and 10 minutes spent of the phone with the Storyist people. Great folk. Really. Need to breathe and reassess. I think my 3DN is over for this year.

Saturday, September 4, 2010 – 7:00 pm :: <2nd response to Storyist on FB> Steve: Thanks for your willingness to spend over an hour trying to resolve my issues and find as many backup and and bits and pieces of my files. It means a lot to me and certainly signals how important this software is to you and your company. I’m going to take a break and drink some gin. Again, thanks for all the effort. I feel a lot calmer!

Monday, September 6, 2010 – 10:30 am :: Novel eaten by technology. Drank gin & hung w/ pals last night. “The monkey stole your coconuts?” I’d still be voted off the island.

Monday, September 6, 2010 – 10:45 am :: How’s my head??…. fine. Drank lots of water and took pills and stuff. I know how to mange my gin. Just not my novel writing… LOL! I’m really seasoned after 5+ years of Monday Night Martinis. And it didn’t get FUCKING ugly at all. No ranting or raging or throwing. I was (and continue to be) pretty surprised at how calm I am. And thing is, this happened to me on this piece in the spring. This was the opportunity to rewrite. I’ve lost content all weekend. Believe me… some of it is NOT better content.

Monday, September 6, 2010 – 11:00 am :: Deadline is midnight today but I’m out of the running as of about 6pm yesterday. Technology has defeated my historical novel… Haven’t decided what to do today…

Monday, September 6, 2010 – 11:30 am :: managed to recover about 6,700 words in the end. Deadline 12 hrs away. The other 43,500 words will have to wait for NaNoWriMo

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 – 7:06 pm :: On Thursday, as I left the office, I let my colleagues know what I was planning to do. There was NO WAY I was going to have think I would be good for anything after the marathon. It was requested that I report out. So here it is. Blue is the category. Green is my response:

• Hopelessness & impossibility = cyclical and frequent. Please see twitter.com/LadyKona for the blow by blow
• eye glaze = very uncomfortable at 10:00 am following 3 hrs of sleep, before coffee and with cat hair in eye
• finger cramp = ongoing to the present. I’d rather sit on hot potatoes than type today… or tomorrow…
• coffee panic = why does this taste like tea! Oh. I ran the water through the grounds a second time. Maybe if I add enough Irish Cream…
• 4:00 am cry for help = How did you know about me loosing a HUGE chunk of my novel at this time?
• 4:00 pm cry for quiet = are they fighting dogs for money out in the hallway? Honestly people!
• Jubilation = What a great scene! But I can’t believe the matriarch did that to the little girl! Who knew?!
• Desperation = *rocking* please gawd, tell me that the times stamp on my back up file includes the last three hours…
• Jabulani = hmmm… another spelling error… what’s that on average? Three per line?  Hope the judges are drunk and high when they read this…
• joint pain = are there joints in my ass? Cause my ass bones really, really hurt.
• Anxiety sweats = Is that the spinning wheel of death? No. Really? Is it? No. really? Is it hot in here? (for visual representation see: http://www.gizmodiva.com/home_improvement/throwzini_knife_block_to_vent_out_your_anger.php)
• Completion =
• Longing to Sleep = Wait! I know… Yes baby… I’m coming to bed… just let me get this down before I loose it…
• Can’t sleep = **toss**… **turn**… **toss**… **turn** GAWD! Maybe if I just sit in front of it I’ll be able to write more… just grab some cheese first… poor kitties, you need water… There! My sunglasses, yeesh….
• Sleep = See? I’m still awake! I’m just gonna stretch out here… and… zzzzz…