Good intentions and all that: since January I’ve been meaning to write a review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, which gutted me, and then intending to write reviews of some other not-quite-so-gutting but still beautiful/difficult novels I’ve read and loved since then — and even some very good nonfiction.
The Ministry for the Future feels much more important than other books, for obvious reasons.
Here at the western edge of Canada, even though we haven’t experienced the terrible smoke this summer that other places have (yet!), even if we aren’t quite going from flood season to fire season yet (where we used to go from rainy season to less rainy season), it’s close enough that the worry is always there in the background.
Things can get worse. Things will get worse.
But I’m trying not to worry all the time. And of course other things have been going on too.
I’ve been taking courses at the local art university. Partly because as a kid it was my dream to go to art school, but more practically, I decided it was time to develop some basic illustration skills and then apply them to zine-making. The classes haven’t been super applicable to what I’m doing with zines so far, but they have been excellent anyhow.
And for one of them I did a big project using text from that novel I keep talking about, How Does It Feel to Feel.
I also have a story coming out very soon in a literary magazine, and I’m very excited about that. I will post details and links once it happens!
3-Day Novel Contest news
And as of today, as far as I know, my novella Lonesome Stars is still shortlisted for the 2022 3-Day Novel Contest.
So I’m enjoying this moment, this space between the good news of being shortlisted and the announcement saying who has won.
And the 3-Day Novel Contest is special. I’m always surprised when something of mine gets accepted, or shortlisted, or wins something — but this news surprised me in a particularly funny way, because when I first saw the title (Lonesome Stars) in the announcement, I couldn’t recall anything (nothing at all!) about the book. I vaguely remembered the 3-day novel I wrote in 2021 (it’s a prequel to the novel I’m working on right now, set in an alternate version of Western Canada), but I was drawing a complete blank on what I had done in 2022. Lonesome Stars — what the heck was that? It sounded like a small-time1990s indie musician’s idea of a somewhat alt-country-inflected band. Which of course is what I intended when I wrote it, as I realised when I went back through my files and found my Scrivener document. (And I reread it; to my huge relief it wasn’t terrible.)
The thing about the 3-Day Novel experience, at least for me, is that all the times I’ve done it (4? 5?) I’ve spent that Labour Day weekend in state of altered consciousness. In 2021 and 2022 I drafted up an extremely short and sketchy outline the day before, so I would have a very rough idea of where I was planning to go. Then I aimed at writing 10,000 words a day — and for those three days I didn’t talk to anyone or leave my apartment — except to get takeout, and maybe the occasional walk around the block to try to get unstuck.
When I was younger and tried it, I did “finish” my novels and I loved the full-on experience of writing them, but I didn’t have the discipline or knowledge for them to have any kind of shape or structure. Now, after taking a lot more workshops and doing NaNoWriMo several times, it’s easier for me to get a lot of words when I need to, and for them to make more sense. But the 3-Day Novel Contest experience is still all-consuming, and the whole weekend had the kind of intensity I think some people look for when they sign up for spiritual retreats.
And yet what I didn’t really expect was how successfully I walled off that weekend of writing from the rest of my life. I wrote for all those hours for those three days, and even did a quick review every evening so I would have the threads of the story in my mind for the next day. Then, after I submitted the novel to the contest folks, I completely put it out of my mind. COMPLETELY.
When I reread the manuscript a couple of months ago I couldn’t remember a single thing about what was going to happen next to the characters, although as I went through the scenes I kept thinking, oh yeah, this person, and oh yeah, this part.
I guess it’s not totally unlike life outside of writing. It’s a little bit like that sensation of going back to a place you haven’t seen since you were a child, and had forgotten about — and then stopping and looking around, suddenly haunted by very specific and vivid details.
Anyhow, I am enjoying this moment.
Thank you to the wonderful 3-Day Novel people for reading and considering Lonesome Stars.
I’m so proud and happy to be on this shortlist.
