Write 100 pages in three days

Do you think you can do it? Do you think you can write 100 pages in three days?

The sick and twisted thing is that insane bursts of activity like that are my favorite way to work. There’s nothing I like better than getting totally consumed by a project and going at it, balls-to-the-wall. That’s why I like 24 Hour Comics Day. That’s why I like the 3 Day Novel Contest. There’s nothing better than getting so consumed by an idea that it’s all you really want to work on from morning to night.

My French teacher once told me that’s how the famous French novelist Simenon worked. He wrote these slender mysteries, and he’d write them in two weeks. Just completely throwing himself into his work. Locking himself into a room and coming out when he finished. And if he didn’t finish it during that orgy of creativity, he never did. It may be a little depressing to think of the unfinished manuscripts this method left behind, but his method yielded something like 500 novels of various lengths, all told.

Maybe she overstated his technique or maybe she got it wrong entirely, but the approach works well for me. I’ve written a half-dozen novellas over the course of three day weekends. Once, I completely rewrote a novel from beginning to end, basically transforming the whole book, by working a limited 9-to-5 schedule and doing nothing but writing and sleeping besides. This was around Christmas, circa 2005, I believe.

With Presidents’ Day Weekend coming up, I think it might be time to throw myself into one of these furies yet again. The idea for a social commentary has been floated. An idea has formed in my head. A novella may be the result.

In 3 Days, you say? Yes, mother-fuckers. In three days.