WRITING | Three days. Two authors. One book deal. Team writing for the win!

Love Block, 2004, a 3-Day Novel Contest winner

The 3-Day Novel Contest is one crazy-ass Canadian initiative, but every year, another winner is born. And last year, the contest had twins! That’s right, a pair of ballsy ladies just won the big one.

Meghan Austin, 26, and Shannon Mullally, 27, wrote their winning novel, Love Block, long distance, via phone and email.

Here’s how it usually works: You sign up. You spend Labour Day weekend writing (a mere 72 hours). You hope for the best. If you’re smart, you write as a pair, like these two did.

As someone who’s followed the contest for some time, through new management and internal changes, and who’s competed, I can tell you this: it’s hard. It’s beyond hard. It’s an emotionally devastating, major mind fuck. But then again, I didn’t win. Austin and Mullally did.

Here, the lucky and talented pair weighs in (via email, of course) on winning a contest that takes the odds way beyond what is known as a “long shot.”

Jen Selk: Had you competed in the contest before? Reminisce!

Meghan Austin: This is our first time competing, and I didn’t even believe we’d go through with it. I worried that one or both of us would defect to the beach or we’d hate each other by the end.

Shannon Mullally: Last year, Meghan called me up from Portland and said, ‘there is this writing contest over Labour Day weekend…’ we thought it was a good way to continue writing after grad school. We were both going through the graduation blues.

Best and worst moments? Highs and lows?

MA: Best: The whole weekend was great. Plus, it gave me an excuse to stay indoors. I hate nature and was living in Oregon for some reason. Worst: That it ended. It was such an intense experience.

SM: The best moment: the day after. The morning after the contest was over, I woke up and saw our print out on the table, and suddenly I was really, really proud, and then I realized I haven’t felt that way in too long a time.

Worst moments: on the third day, I was stuck in my room typing, and I could hear the boy that lives above me having sex (with the usual plaster falling on my head), and I could hear one of my roommates down the hall having sex, and there was nothing I could do but plug in my headphones and try to ignore all the rampant passion around me.

Also, my computer completely crashed on the third day, and I lost the manuscript and the ability to email the letters to Meghan. Luckily, Meghan had been saving our letters as we went along, and one of my roommates lent me her computer. But, I lost a few tense hours in a tangle of cords.

Tell me about writing as a team versus writing solo.

Meghan Austin and Shannon Mullally, 3-Day Novel Contest winners.

MA: Writing with Shannon is way more fun than writing alone. I would recommend that everyone write a novel with Shannon, if they can.

SM: For me it was definitely better, since I usually write more slowly, in shorter forms. (I have been known to move commas around for ridiculous amounts of time.) So, getting emails from Meghan always presented something fun and exciting to respond to – and a push not to censor or edit myself so much. It was like getting an unexpected postcard from a friend every half hour with no idea of where they had been or what they had been doing. And you have to write back.

How do you think the writing you’ve done before (the work you’ve spent longer on) compares to the quality of writing in Love Block?

MA: Love Block has 100% more masturbation scenes and uses the word “fuck” 50% more frequently (than my other work). So, it’s about 150% better.

SM: Strangely, the quality is the same, but what was interesting was toward the middle of the book, I began to write in Meghan’s style without meaning to, and she began writing in my style. Meghan’s writing is so hilarious and strange; I wanted to write like her and had to stop myself from trying to mimic her voice.

You already won once. Will you compete again?

MA: It seems anti-climactic. It’s the rush of trying something new and crazy and possibly dangerous that makes the contest so great.

SM: I may spend this Labour Day with a Margarita on the beach! I think we’ve riled up most of Chicago into competing. It was such a great experience, and I think it is hard for people to find time to write.

What do you think about the contest on the whole?

MA: The 3-Day Novel Contest is the badass of publishing. Who else would publish a novelist who hasn’t had an agent, a lawyer, or a shower?

SM: This contest is amazing and brilliant. Usually, it takes years to write a book and see it published, and usually the kind of book that gets published is the kind of book the publisher wants to see published (yawn). And the 3-Day Novel doesn’t want to decide what people should be writing. They want to see what happens when people let loose in three days. (In fact, the whole idea of restraints fueling/freeing creativity has been used by artists for a long time. In Literature, the Oulipo group is famous for it.)

What’s your best piece of advice for anyone signing up this year?

MA: I don’t like to give advice, but I do think the process of writing is better with another writer. Especially a writer who is hotter and smarter.

SM: Keep your favourite books by your side. If you get stuck anytime during the three days, flip through one until you find a line you like; it may inspire a new start.

Last thoughts? Amusing anecdotes?

SM: Anytime anyone accidentally interrupted me during the three days – an unexpected phone call from afar, or a repeated knock on the door – I would work them into the book.

A version of this piece about team writing contest winners published in Dose on August 23, 2005. I did the interviews by email on August 14, 2005, and snapped the photos at a press event in Vancouver on August 17th. See clipping below. 

Published in Dose, August 23, 2005.