Sounds like hell
If you take Kafka's The Hunger Artist and cross-breed it with Survivor, here's what you get: a place where authors live on stale Timbits, duke it out at the coffee urns for precious caffeinated resources, and--MEEP!--are forced to write in public. In Chapters, where a mere wander amid remainder bins and stacks of backlist titles is enough to kill off one's literary aspirations for a month. The Tyee's Ron Yamauchi participates in a Chapters/Book TV 3-Day Novel writing spectacle, a concept ripped off from the original Arsenal Pulp/Anvil contest which began its closed-door, honour-system version in Vancity way back when Kits was still for hippies. Ron reports:
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.Horrors! I read that last bit through interlaced fingers. Writers, if you really want to scare the shit out of yourselves, check out the Video Update in the sidebar of the 3-Day Novel site.
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!
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