It’s that time of year again…when I ask for sponsorship funds for the Muskoka Novel Marathon’s fundraiser for literacy. My funding page has been created and I am now able to collect donations online.
100% of the funds raised by the 40 writers taking part in the 72 hour novel writing marathon goes towards running the literacy programs of the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka. We raise over $30,000.00 a year during this marathon…and these are well needed funds that keep all the current literacy programs alive, as well as help the YMCA create new programs.
With your help, we can make a difference for so many people.
Watch FLIPBOOK, the short movie set at the Marathon:
Here’s a news segment from the 2017 marathon:
I hope you consider sponsoring me for this worthy cause. Please click on the link below to contribute online. No donation is too small!
After chatting with a fellow Muskoka Novel Marathon marathoner last night, I decided to write a quick post about preparing to undergo a novel writing marathon. This is for both my fellow MNM marathoners, and, for anyone who is thinking of doing a novel writing marathon on their own.
Our yearly marathon takes place in July, so we currently have just shy of three months to prepare. As it is a competition and the novels submitted at the end of the 72 hour marathon get sent to judges for individual critique and consideration in the BEST NOVEL AWARD for their categories, we are only allowed to submit what we write AT the marathon. The writers are, however, allowed to bring a one-page outline of the novel they wish to write while at the marathon. So we don’t have to come into it completely unprepared. For those who write based on an outline, there’s a lot you can fit onto one page. An entire novel, if you’re careful with your bullet pointing. (-:
After chatting with Jennifer Turney last night, I’ve decided to approach this year’s marathon a little differently. We’ll see how it goes. You might recall from my recent Oops, I did it again post that Jennifer is to blame for me participating in the novel marathon this year. She ignited the spark that led to my eventual registration.
In prior years I never really prepared so much as I worried myself into an anxious state of catatonia as the weekend approached. The only thing I really made sure to have going into the marathon was a title for the novel I would write. The ideas themselves? I just allowed those to fly about in my mind untethered. I neither pinned them down, nor thought them out. I just hoped something would stick when I sat down to write.
This was okay for several years. And then the 2016 novel marathon came and I sat down and had approximately ZERO idea what it was I was going to write. I didn’t even have a title that year. In fact, for the first 24 hours of the 72 hour novel writing marathon I basically wrote nothing. I hemmed and hawed, I floated from one WIP to another…deciding not to enter the competition but to work on something I had already began elsewhere. But nothing was motivating me, nothing spoke to me. After having a short conversation with fellow marathoner Dale Long, after 24 hours of wasted marathoning,
From that point onward, I had a plan. Dale suggested I write MY STORY, only change it. Not a great epiphany in its own right, but man…it hit me like a rock on the side of the head. It was almost as though his suggestion gave me a permission of sorts. I’m sure a lot of writers do this, but it was almost as though it had never occurred to me until Dale mentioned it. I was desperate. I wanted to write something, to have something useful when my 72hrs were up. So I took Dale’s advise and began to tell something resembling my own story with an unfathomable amount of lies sprinkled throughout to make it nothing like my story. Once I began, I just kept trucking right on through to the end of the marathon.
I wrote I WILL TELL THE NIGHT in the last 48 hours of the marathon. And much to my surprise, it went on to win the 2016 Best Adult Novel Award.
So much for a quick post. I have done what I usually do. I have digressed.
Maybe bullet points will help shorten this post.
NOVEL MARATHON PREPARATION TIPS:
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silenceHow ’bout me enjoying the moment for once
How bout remembering your divinity
How bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
I think that song actually carries in it a great piece of wisdom about the Muskoka Novel Marathon. The moment you release your fear at how overwhelming a task it is that you set yourself is the moment you receive the gift of how wonderful the experience is.
The moment I let go of it
Was the moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it
Was the moment I touched down
See you at the marathon.
Last night, after believing for the entire spring that I wouldn’t, I registered for the 2018 Muskoka Novel Marathon. It was a harried chain of events that brought me to getting a coveted spot at this year’s novel writing marathon for literacy.
Step 1: Get a DM from Jennifer Turney at around 7:30 last night. “Did you get in?” Wrack my brain for five minutes…did I get in where? Where was I trying to get into? Was this message meant for me?
Step 2: Realize what Jennifer is talking about and DM her back to tell her I’m not doing MNM this year.
Step 3: Spend an hour on the subway thinking, “I really should,” while listening to 80s new wave and getting strange looks.
Step 4: Get home, hear from Michael that there’s still spots left for the marathon. Look at the site map for the seating arrangements and notice MY seat spot is still open. It’s LITERALLY the best seat in the house. This can’t be?!?!
Step 5: Just before bed, Facebook Colum about NOT registering. Hem and Haw.
Step 6: Look at seating map again. MY seat is STILL available. Usually the marathon spots sell out within minutes. The universe is calling. Answer the phone.
Step 7: REGISTER.
So, I will be writing a novel in 72hrs once again.
Details will follow, but suffice it to say…I’m excited, scared, nervous, freaking.
I will be asking for donations soon. We collect about $30,000 a year and all monies collected go directly to the LITERACY PROGRAMS at YMCA of Simcoe Muskoka. We are WRITERS HELPING READERS. I hope you will consider helping! Look for my personal fundraising link soon! Or hit me up this coming SATURDAY at the WCDR meeting! Any amount helps!
40 writers + 72 hours = 40 novels and lots of laughs and tears and lots of money for literacy programs!
Circa or Exactly 2018…To be precise. If the fates allow. We are scheduled to take off in 147 days(ish). Not that I’m counting (pssst…spoiler alert, I’m counting).
Every single time I go on a holiday I mean to journal the experience so I can cultivate from it at a later date for my fiction. Every single time I do not do this. Even when I had a novel idea for the Camino de Santiago before I set out to Spain on that adventure, I didn’t journal as planned. I carried a journal in my backpack, though. All the other useless stuff weighing me down wasn’t enough. I also had to make sure I was carrying a journal I wouldn’t crack open a single time along the Way of St. James. I was too busy splashing in mud puddles and meeting new people to bother with a journal. Next time!
I regret my inability to journal immediately after every journey I take. And yet the cycle never changes. So, I’m calling myself out. THIS TIME I shall attempt to journal once again. In September, when we embark on this trip to India, I will have a journal with me. This time will be different. This time I will not only carry a journal across a country. I will open it. I will write in it. I will bear witness to what it is I’m bearing witness to. I will make words every night and keep track of the smells and the sights and the sounds and the people and the animals and the tastes. I will prevail.
And I will scour Ontario for the ugliest journal known to man. This way I can’t use the highly popular excuse, “But it’s far too pretty to spoil” argument that renders me incapable of writing a single word in the journals I choose solely for their pretty factor. I will pick the butt-ugliest journal on the shelf and I will christen it with words before we even land. That is the goal.
As Exhibit A below suggests, however, I may fail in my goal. I carried the same journal with me to 3 consecutive Ontario Writers’ Conference conferences. Each time I planned to take notes in it. Each time I couldn’t bear to destroy it with the presence of ink. At the 4th conference I casually mentioned my dilemma to Wayson Choy. Apparently Wayson is an extremely pragmatic man. He ripped the journal from my hand, opened to a random page and jotted down the following:
My problem? Wayson is not coming to India with us. Maybe I can toss my ugly India journal into the street and run over it a couple of times with my car. Or maybe I can pound my fists on Wayson’s front door and plead with him to christen my new ugly India journal?
My problem with that is, ever since Wayson wrote in the above journal (Exhibit A) I have been unable to write in it. I mean, Wayson Choy wrote in it! So, no late night drive-by pleading for journal christening. The running-it-over-with-the-car idea is looking better by the second.
I need to journal India. I mean, I need to. I have always wanted to set a story (stories) in India. I don’t know what, but I know I want to do it. I’m hoping the story will come to me in my travels. But I’m afraid it won’t if I don’t diligently journal.
I’ll figure something out. I did commit my commitment to a blog post, after all. That’s one way of attempting to police myself. If I blog about it, it has to happen. Right?
Edit To Add: