I hardly ever wear the tattoos out in public. I really got them to fit in better at Spartacus, where my wife and I work out, very occasionally. Those are, like, training wheel tattoos. The minimum amount of tattoo permitted.

I was trying hard to get on the show, though, so I figured, try to look kinda "edgy" and "hep." They went for it!

Did that classic Monty Python sketch occur to anyone, as they set out to make writing a spectator sport. "He's written the first word, and it's a definite article, it's 'the.' No, he's crossing it out..."

Well, I am set up now in Chapters in Edmonton. I have my outline notes, toothbrush, bunk assignment and free can of pop The thing I wish I had brought was more blankets because the air conditioning is chilly here. Oh well, I'm not here to sleep comfortably.

It looks like a pretty fun set-up. They'll us doing a few mental gymnastics and maybe even some physical ones, in addition to our novels. There is a big screen setup so that we will all have to take turns writing them in a very public manner. Note to self: reserve hardcore sex scenes for my turn.

The Chapters is big and lovely. I normally like to support the independent bookstores, but this one has a Starbucks that opens at 630, which is what we're going to need.

I thought we would be in more of a cage-type situation but we are actually out on the floor, centrally -- the better for gawking I suppose. The staff are wearing 3Day Novel t-shirts and there are banners outside. Come stare at the nerdy writers!

This is Ron's wife Willow writing from Vancouver, (sorry, can't figure out how to log out and in again).
Ron, wake up and start writing!
I wonder if there is a support forum for 3-day novel widows and widowers?

I went to bed as soon as the contest started. That was my strategy -- let the others burn themselves out the first day by staying up til 4 am. I woke up at 7 and started at 8. Now I am off the computer again because I lost the first challenge of the day. The penalty is an hour of computerlessness.

The challenge was to come up with the best opening line. I used "Jenny fell in blue." I thought that was evocative and in context quite good. However they went for something longer. Well, whatever. On one hand it was a fair decision because that is not actually my novel's opening -- it is from my previous novel. On the other hand, it is a good line, I thought -- certainly not the worst of the twelve.

The penalty includes access to an ancient Underwood typewriter. I figured out that I could use its crappy text to add texture so I wrote some cryptic notes that I can insert into the text -- clues for the characters. But then the machine does not even have any ink in it.

I am using this hour to update the Tyee and after that I will go for a little jog to disperse some of the hostility I am feeling. But not all of it, because as John Lydon once ranted, "Anger is an energy! Anger is an energy!"

So this is my update: there are 12 of us, mostly from Edmonton because, I guess, of easy access to the location. I find most of them to be all right. There are a couple who are trying far, far too hard to bring their unique personalities into focus. If it get more into focus I am going to punch them through the back wall of the bookstore.

But that is good. I don't especially want to make friends here, at least not to the point of excess. (Civility, of course, is a must. We remain Canadian.)

Did anyone see Akeelah and The Bee? I finally watched it with my daughter. I was absolutely outraged by the scene at the end where she tries to lose the contest because she pities her competitor. I thought that was an example of good sportspersonship run rampant. Then again, I am probably not a very nice person really. That would never happen with me.

As for support forums, there are couple of places on the Net with 3Day discussions -- at abebooks.com and at the Book Television site.

Well, time for my run. I am going to get sweaty...that will teach them to give me a failing mark. It is tit for tat reciprocity. Fuckers.

I guess I about ten hours into it now. Thankfully, I feel like I have started to get into the groove. The typing is coming quickly, automatically. Maybe too automatic. I don't want to overpersist, to excessively detail one area of the canvas when so much remains. I need to use a broad brush -- or palatte knife, like my hero the late Bob Ross. I need to get those happy mountains in there with the happy trees, not fart around with the happy shingles.

Speaking of farting, someone here is cutting the cheese big time. I hope it isn't me. It might be -- I have been given an enormous bag of raw produce by my loving Edmonton relatives, and that stuff makes the gas. Tonight should be quite interesting. We are all bunking together -- hopefully no one lights a match.

OK, back to work.

It is fun, ya know. I wish I could be like this more often. The words are coming so quickly, the voice so clear that all I need to do is transcribe.

I just had my first triumph here. After losing the challenge this morning for having the WORST! OPENING! LINE! I was determined to try harder for this evening's test, which was to do a performance reading of an excerpt to the accompaniment of live musicians. It was very much like slam poetry, or so I assume, having never actually seen any except in Mike Myer's "So I Married An Axe Murderer" (underrated flick by the way, rent it now).

Luckily, the prologue of my novel is just dialogue between two characters, which I figured could fit around some grooves. I also thought of how I wanted it to sound and I actually told the musicians what chords to play in time with certain hand gestures. And then it was illustrated with a couple of Willow's cat paintings, which I have incorporated into the text (it is so much easier than making the whole thing up).

All of the excerpts were good -- somewhat to my surprise. I don't know, maybe that is insulting to my co-writers. I had wonderer if some of them were just here cuz they are pretty (and me because I am ethnic). But the material seemed strong -- some evocative images, a little bit of stark urban realism, some wacky surreal slapstick, you name it.

I destroyed them! The crowd at the store was rocking!

But I didn't win though. That went to someone who offered things like, I dunno, plot. I just had attitude and paintings. Still, the goal was not to lose, because the losses involve things that take away writing time. And we are shedding enough of that doing these challenges.

Anyway, back to work. I am toying with the idea of staying up til 2, which is partly because I have been scheduled to be on this "13 machine" (public display) from 12-2 anyway. But they aren't going to force me to stay awake either. I will type a few more chapters and make the call at midnight. My goal was to get 50 pages today, and I only have 28, so it is not going to happen.
But I want to get as close as possible...which means sayonara for now.

Hey if anyone is reading this please post a comment!

No? OK, the lonely life of the author etc etc.

Just got up after about 5.5 hours of sleep. Really the bare bare minimum. I think I might be doing fairly well because I can pass out anywhere. But I am human...full throated goose honking adenoidal gargle-strangle snoring IS going to get me out of dreamland. I won't identify the culprit but it did occur to me that with so many writers coming up with murder mysteries and general mayhem in their work, that antagonizing them like this could be...actually, it could not be that dangerous. What are we going to do, type them to death?

Good morning sunshine (Ron's wife again).
Isn't this an interesting dialogue? It's almost as if you were talking to yourself.
I wish I could have seen your beat poetry,
Way to let your freak flag fly.

Hi hon.

Anyway, I am just writing a bit before I go to the 13th machine -- which displays my writing on a big screen here at Chapters Southpoint Edmonton.

It is a grind now. Very like the Grouse Grind actually. You know how you do the Grind, and it seems easy at first and you think it's not so bad? Then it gets really steep and you just work and work, and sweat and sweat, and your water's nearly gone and then you see the marker and it says: 1/4 up.

That's what this is like now.

We did a challenge at 10 this morning. To come up with a character description. I was trying hard to win it of course but it was just mediocre. That's what I'm doing now. Brain not rested, but I don't want to have more coffee cuz I don't want that edgy dread feeling. Not tired out either, so am able to crank out words. Plodding along, step after step, staying on the trail just like on the Grind.

I feel like a machine. Like any good machine you have to care for it. I gave it some protein, some carbs. I showered it today and had a brief workout and stretch to keep it limber and the circulatory fluid moving. I give it water and consider the colour of the water that comes out to see if it is enough. I follow my outline. I type until a page is done. I trick myself like I trick myself on the Grind. One more step. One more sentence. And another. And another! Then you can rest! One more! One more! How about that next hill/paragraph!

You may be sick of this metaphor by now but actually it makes me feel kind of optimistic. Because I have done the Grind before and I remember that it actually gets easier after the halfway mark. The pain subsides and the body adjusts to the slog. You just figure, eh, let's do it some more, let's finish. Then eventually you are at the top.

I am halfway in time on this contest now. 36 hours to go.

Time for the next hill.

(Ron's inept at computer's wife again)
So...you see, you do finish the grind every time, and you do feel amazingly smug every time afterwards. You will break through this too.
I am imagining that everyone is starting to feel pretty grim and smell pretty nasty by now, so that must be interesting.
How glad I am to be here in Vancouver, and not there in a Chapter's in Edmonton.
As I told myself when I was in labour with your children, "soon this will just be a terrible memory."

I'm reading, Ron. Just wondering how much prep you do before the actual contest. You mention your outline. I take it everyone has one enterting the contest. Or do some people come in cold?

Oh I am so tired I forgot and logged in as Yammer. This is Ron.

18 hours to go. Maybe four chapters left? Five? I think I can do it.

I decided to pull an all-nighter. I am in shape for it. I really have been pretty good to my body the last few years...time to cash it. Sleep tonight. Finish first.

Outlining is pretty standard. They let us bring in 2 pages of notes. I had less than a page, but the story beats were all up in my head. The hard part is not plot or even character, the hard part is actually driving the thing from A to B. What is the opening line of each chapter? Where do you stop? Whose voices are you using? Whose heads are you in? That is just technical stuff, mechanical, but it is absolutely key. There's no way to see the colours if the canvas won't stay on the frame.

I'm sure some people just try to wing it, but I can't see that being a high percentage strategy. This is a stunt, a short novel in 72 hours. You want to cover yourself. I don't know what the figures are but I doubt that half of the people who sign up for this can finish.

I know that I am not as prepared as some -- some one, for example, covered her 2 pages of allowable notes both sides with tiny font that had to be read with a magnifying glass. I don't care though -- her novel is a murder mystery. Who cares? They are a dime a dozen. You have to, IMO, make the short format work for you. A lot of experimental fiction and SF is done partly because of the strangeness imposed by the format and also because it skews to a younger crowd, the ones that can write on no sleep. Which, hopefully, includes me until midnight tonight. All I can say is, Red Bull works.

Hey Yammer, so you're doing a survival thing, eh. Go for it. I hope you win, but some of us out here are expecting you'll do an essay for Tyee on how this is contributing to your art as a writer and stuff like that. Okay I lied. Only me.

Getting close....

Pressure's on, Ron. Don't blow it.

I once took the three-day plunge, but being even lazier than Mr. Yamauchi I arranged to do it with several other writers as a tag-team novel. Premise was that the Second Coming had taken place, but the Vatican had decided it was damned inconvenient, seeing as things were going pretty well for the church, and so Jesus was put on ice.

I remember little else, except for a scene where a startled Son of God pushed a putter grip through the hole in one hand while setting up on the 18th green of the Papal pitch and putt. And I remember our last remaining typewriter breaking down near the bitter end, so two of us fed the ribbon through while another wrote and a couple of others barked suggestions that were most certainly hilarious in the moment but, I'm sure, utterly unhelpful to the limited cohesion of our great work.

We did not win, but we had an awfully good time.

I'm back from Edmonton! Just sitting down now feeding my Tyee addiction. Thanks for having me on!

Well I finished at 11:52 last night, the very last of the 12 to complete. There were no dropouts and hopefully some new friendships as well.

By finishing so late I did not get to edit. I spell checked as I went but the MS is undoubtably full of clunky stuff not to mention inconsistencies from having gone off the outline.

Afterwards we celebrated til 2 and then I went to bed planning to wake up at 5 to catch my flight. I lay awake hypervenilating until almost 4 and then slept through my alarm -- but I did make the 730 connection, with seconds to spare.

Yes, timing is everything.

Thinking about time today. About how much I slept...

First night: 6 hours
Second night: 5 hours
Third night: 2 hours
Fourth night (post completion): 3 hours.

3 hours is the new 5 hours!

Being a show, the contest was full of timings. Live inserts, 20 seconds. Show tapings. Lots of editing, which is a science. (Got to chat with the editor, Bill, who was really friendly and unnervingly familiar with our personal stories, having cut footage on us for weeks and all day long.)

There was a real birthday vibe. I had just turned 40, the camera guy and the host also had birthdays, and one of the writers... it was a bizarre coincidence. In another bizarre coincidence, a major (unexpected) theme of my book was that there are no bizarre coincidences. There is always a higher purpose, not necessarily one that you can readily hear.

My current higher purpose is to change my socks, although my table-mate Felicia was even grodier by going barefooted and uncleansed the entire time. Fortunately she was invigorating herself with refreshing herbal mists, so there were no flies or anything.

I got to know Felicia on my right and Catherine on my left. And Tim, to Catherine's left, because they were so busy putting on The Bickersons -- though I eventually got to liking them. I probably would have been able to make friends with all of them, but because our seat order was fixed (and we had an obviously tight writing deadline) there wasn't much opportunity to buddy around. Or maybe there was, and I didn't take it.

As soon as I bought my earplugs on Day 2, I was able to lock into a mood of possession, trance, self-hypnosis...it was absolutely necessary. But scary because I had no idea I was still going with 8 minutes left. I thought I had more time.

Well I have taken up enough of yours with these rambles....thank you for reading them. Time for breakfast!

Hey Truman

I'm up for writing that story. My brain is totally buzzing with thoughts about it...and just generally buzzing. Let no one ever tell you that caffeine isn't a full on drug. As tired as I should be, I am wired. It's freaking me out a little, I don't want to hurt my body.

"a major (unexpected) theme of my book was that there are no bizarre coincidences. There is always a higher purpose, not necessarily one that you can readily hear."

Okay, you lost me there. Coincidences are just that. I agree it's more romantic to believe in fate or whatever, but let's get serious. Still, I'm sure it's an entertaining read given that you wrote it.

Oh I am a total rationalist...well maybe not total. I am what you might call a reluctant atheist. I always respond very emotionally to fiction which makes an argument for a guiding intelligence, like Owen Meany. My book does not have a God per se, but it does have a Christian character who represents faith and whose conviction triggers an ephiphany in the protag at the moment of life and death.

Ron, your "no bizarre coincidences" theme is what really caught my attention, so I'd be interested to know where it has taken you. I also like your "guiding intelligence" idea. And "triggers an epiphany." That's gotta be interesting.

Hi Ron, me again. I was just looking into the archives and I came across this comment which you wrote on December 8, 2005, regarding HIV, after a Danielle Egan article entitled, "Hiv Vaccine Testers Recruit Vancouver Women."

Your comment:

"Ive given up expecting the alternative Aids hypothesis to show up in corporate media, but this is the Tyee. Where is the perspective that the best treatment for HIV might, in fact be to completely ignore it?"

You might have noticed I've done at least 20 comments supporting this position since Danielle Egan wrote those two articles regarding vaccine trials.

Now that you have gained credibility with the Straight and Tyee, do you intend to write about this very important issue, especially as you were complaining about lack of representation of the "alternative Aids hypothesis" in corporate media.

Alternative AIDS...yeah I am still waiting for that article to be written here. Possibly by me? I dunno, am I credible about medicine? Why would I be?
The point is not whether I have any inherent authority, but whether I can cover the issue in an interesting way.

I have a hard time not seeing it as THE underrated story of our times. The lawsuits could wipe out governments, seriously.

Thanks for responding, Ron. As they say in the movies, you're a "stand up" guy to even acknowledge my query. And they're few and far between. Okay maybe two or three per 1000. Yeah, $1,000,000 to the families of everyone poisoned to death by AZT would be a deficit builder alright--for openers.

Qualifications for doing the article: Functioning brain, absolutely no agenda or conflict of interest; excellent understanding of virology and retrovirology, and medical science; no fear of men in black; excellent bullshit detector; no concern about being blacklisted for life from journalistic pursuits; no fear of losing support of family and friends.

Narrows the field, eh.

What also narrows the field is just the whole tragedy of it. If Peter Duesberg is right about AIDS having nothing to do with HIV, then the magnitude of the mistake is just...

It would be hard to accept. Intellectually, you could explain about retroviruses and precedents where environmental poisoning was mistaken for a new "bug" but, emotionally, people are not inclined to hear about it. It just can't be that way, right? Screw Kary Mullins...or Duesberg... just ignore them, mock them, call them fantasists or denialists, do anything but consider the idea that the casualties of the war on AIDS have principally come from friendly fire...it would just be too awful.
.

Hi Ron. The key to breaking this hoax is the question: What exactly is Hiv, and how can it destroy the human immune system?

You'd have to present dichotomous comparisions between all of the etiological incarnations claimed by the Aids scientists, from the time Robert Gallo and Margaret Heckler announced that they'd found the "probable cause" of Aids, up to the present day, including such claims as the current one in New Scientist, "How Hiv Burns Out the Immune System."

And you'd have to be able to answer the question: Is hiv really capable of destroying CD4+T-lymphocytes?

The reason this is the key is that, while few non-scientists will understand the science, (and nearly all scientists are merely biotech researchers), most people can recognize contradictions and discrepancies, if they are clearly and concisely presented.

I've looked at every possible angle to this issue; from epidemiology to pathogenesis; from the players in such agencies as the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDs, and its relationship to Pharmacorp; from organizations like Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, to Duesberg's scientific papers on the subject--and corresponded with him; from Aids in Africa, and whether it is, in actuality, just clinical case diagnosis fraudulently used; to a study of the Canada Surveillance Report on HIV/AIDs; to a complete study of current Aids diagnosis in Canada; to the usage of antigen-antibody testing, CD4 and polymerase chain reaction assays; to the incorrect attribution of symptomology as "hiv-related" instead of "hiv drugs-related," such as is the case with peripheral neuropathy; and protease inhibitors and dna chain terminators; to the transmissability studies of J. Palenicek and N. Padian.

The infectious-Aids hypothesis fails in respect to all of these investigations.