Whoa, I did it. I actually finished the 3 Day Novel contest. (Not going to lie, that’s why this is a Thursday morning post instead of a Monday morning post like normal.)

It was a really interesting (and almost therapeutic) experience for me in a lot of ways. Because I knew I was short on time, I did a lot of things that I normally don’t do–I plotted out the basics of the story from start to finish, I thought about each of my characters briefly instead of just making them up as I went, and I stayed very plot-oriented throughout the entire thing, instead of diving into character exploration as I saw fit.

There were a couple of major benefits to this method.

First of all, I actually finished the damn thing. Start to finish. It clocked in at just over 30,000 words, which is pretty much too short for anything–but it’s done, and during my Monday review/editing spree, I actually didn’t outright pitch sections during the revision, which is a first for me. Part of that is because I legitimately couldn’t afford to pitch anything due to the timeline–but also, looking back on it now, I don’t actually think I would pitch any major sections. That makes this the first manuscript I’ve completed where I didn’t have to just jettison massive chunks of it.

Second of all, it forced me to summarize. Let me start by saying that I’m not satisfied with the result of the summaries–some of the coolest things in the story (in my opinion) actually ended up happening in summaries instead of happening in narrative. But it also prevented me from wandering into ‘what if this’ and ‘what if the other’ and ‘also let’s explore this third thing’. I directly narrated the things that were most important to Sophia’s arc–and I summarized everything else. This method also meant that I maximized the time I covered. Overall, in thirty thousand words, I covered seven months of time, which is a ridiculous record for me.*

Third of all, I absolutely destroyed all of my previous wordcount records. Prior to this, my wordcount record had been set in 2003. I was in grade twelve at the time, and the day that I started my science fiction novel, I managed to get 10,123 words written (yes, I remember the exact wordcount). I have never even touched that goal since then. I had a smattering of 5k days during NaNoWriMo 2015, but most days were way less than that. I had multiple years (2005 – 2014) where I hardly wrote at all, and even when I got back to it in 2014, I was slow and unfocused. But during the 3 Day Novel contest? I banged out a reasonably consistent 1800 words per hour. Some of that is due to the style I was writing in–my 3 Day Novel submission was done in a somewhat snarky first person, with occasional asides to the reader, whereas HH is more of a layered introspective overwrought poetry. But I think I’m just getting better at focusing and more efficient at saying what I want to say.

Drawbacks to this method?

I’m completely wiped out, physically and emotionally.

Words are hard now.

Overall, I think the 3 Day Novel was a huge success, and I’m pretty excited to get back to revising what I wrote once I’ve let it sit for a while here.

 

 

 

*To put it into perspective, I’m 26k into my rewrite of HH, and I’ve covered three days.