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Getting in shape for the 3-Day Novel Contest

July 31, 2009

Here at Swordplay, we relish the end of the working week as much as the next man. But this weekend idleness will not be our fate. Instead, we are undertaking a trial run for the forthcoming 3-Day Novel Contest. This, “the world’s most notorious literary marathon”, has been going since 1977 and attracts scribes from around the globe. The task is simple: to produce “a masterwork of fiction” in 72 hours. Entrants require “adrenaline and the desire for spontaneous literary nirvana”, not to mention oodles of stamina. Writing begins at midnight on Friday night, and must stop by midnight on Monday night.

The 32nd Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest takes place on America’s Labour Day weekend, from September 5 to September 7.

As for this weekend, names of Swordplay’s denizens have been placed in a hat. The last name to be picked will be tasked with spending the weekend penning a masterpiece. He or she will be given Monday off, too, in order that the full 72 hour marathon can be experienced. Armed with the results of this experiment, Swordplay will be ready for the 3-Day Novel Contest, proper.

Meanwhile, the organisers state that preparing an outline is permissible. Here’s one we made earlier…

The Lost Weekend by Apollo Zen delves deep in the pysche of the City as its anti-hero, Warren Smorgasbord, finds himself trapped in a lift with only an old Silver Reed typewriter for company. Smorgasbord, the CEO of a major food, law and telecommunications company, finds himself compelled to write, gently, hesitantly at first, but then with increasing freneticism. Soon his fingers, wrists and elbows are aching as he unleashes tortured memory upon tortured fantasy, revealing the secrets of a life in which he has variously been a suspension bridge engineer, shipwright, playwright, copywriter, aviator, lift attendant, corruptible but uncorrupted politician and aficionado of Chelsea basements. But just as The Lost Weekend surges inexorably towards its climax the doors of the lift are wrenched open by a man holding a gun. It is at this moment that Smorgasbord realises that he will never, ever recover the weekend that was. In brutally dissonant, unabashed and honest prose, Apollo Zen reveals the the hidden impulses and inner demons of Smorgasbord, a man for whom three days in a lift represented both his apotheosis – and his nadir.

Pictured: the cover of Day Shift Werewolf by Jan Underwood, the winner of the 2005 3-Day Novel Contest.