Whenever a Muskoka Novel Marathon draws closer I kind of set into a panic mode of sorts. I look around me like a chef in Cutthroat Kitchen, desperate to find the ingredients and cooking implements I need to complete my next task. And I hope and I pray that nobody (i.e. me!) throws a monkey wrench sabotage into the works to mess me up. The marathon is only 72 hours long. And it only comes but once a year. It’s like I only have this short window to jump onto the merry-go-round and take a spin. I have to get it right…right out of the gate. The margin for error is ZERO.
So, this year…in my year of almost zero writing…I feel slightly more desperate than ever before. It’s April. The marathon is in July. I’m already looking around myself in desperation. WHAT CAN I THROW INTO THE BOWL? HOW DO I GET MY INGREDIENTS GOING!? The chefs on Cutthroat Kitchen get what? 30 seconds to grab everything they need from the pantry to make the required dish? I feel like my 30-second pantry time for the Muskoka Novel Marathon has begun. (I won’t even throw into this mix the fact that all the ingredients I pick up in my 30 seconds might just be taken from me once the starting bell rings out and the 72 hour writing adventure begins–believe me, this has happened to me in the past. I have gone in with a plan and immediately scrapped it and started writing something completely random as I sat down to begin. The marathon is organic when it wants to be—outlines be damned!) I’m looking around. And I’m saying, “How am I going to do this?! What can I throw into the bowl?!”
Enter my Book Trailer as an Outline idea I came up with for a workshop I did a couple years ago. I never did explore the story I created for the book trailer. Now, I’m thinking, ‘Well, there’s this?”
From the blog post I wrote at that time:
a YA wherein a boy comes out of the trees and gets himself wrapped up in the life of the girl who just moved into the house beyond his magical woods. It’ll be a story about him adjusting to being a teenager (as opposed to being the soul of a tree) and his romantic ties to the girl from the house…as they both adjust to being new at the area high school. I came up with this future YA project as a sample of a BOOK-TRAILER-AS-NOVEL-OUTLINE for a workshop I put together recently. I threw the book trailer together in a few minutes to show one way a writer can create an outline—especially helpful to writers who abhor outlines—ME. So after the book trailer was completed I thought, ‘that’s actually not a totally terrible idea’. I am now going to be exploring it and checking to see if it has a novel in it.
Here’s the trailer I culled together as an example of creating the trailer before you create the book:
If you are a writer…I think it’s worth the effort to explore creating a book trailer in advance of writing your next story. It’s creatively fun…and you may find that you come up with a more cohesive idea when you’re piecing it together in this way. I just watched this trailer again…after practically forgetting all about it. And I’m thinking, ‘Hey…I’d read that book!’ The question is, will I ever write it!!!???
I might just run with this idea at the #MNM2016 It’s not like I have any other ideas in the pan. I sense that the less you write, the less you use your imagination, the more it dries up and withers away and dies. But I may be wrong. I might step into the room at the marathon and be hit with a thousand and one ideas. Who knows? I find it’s best to be prepared with something…in case nothing comes on its own at the time the bell chimes and the writing begins. One needs to be able to start click click clacking on the keys the very second the marathon begins if one wants something to come out of the weekend. Down-time is the devil at the Muskoka Novel Marathon!
Speaking of the Muskoka Novel Marathon… I can certainly use your help raising funds for the literacy programs of Simcoe Muskoka County YMCA. My donation page is live. Any amount will help. I need to get the ball rolling on this one. We writers do have a decadent weekend of writing bliss to look forward to in this marathon…but the number one goal is to raise funds for literacy. We ARE Writers supporting readers, after all. Please consider making a donation…be a part of the solution and help usher those who need these programs out of the darkness of illiteracy and into the light!
Click on the pic below to be taken to my donation page…
KEVIN CRAIG 
It is a muscle… let it get complacent and it gets all flabby. 😉