Week of August 31, 2006, Issue #567
3-Day novelists get Book TV-ed
JARED MAJESKI / jared@vueweekly.com
It’s been a busy month for Mark John Hiemstra. As a cook at one of Jasper’s most popular restaurants, and finalist in Book TV’s 3-Day Novel Contest, Hiemstra has been busy working everyday so he has the time off to participate in this marathon of prose. Fighting through Jasper’s “busy season” is just another hurdle that he must jump over.Armed with his training regimen of sleep deprivation, two letter-sized pages of notes that he will call an outline and probably a toothbrush, Hiemstra and 11 other writers will set up camp at the south-side Chapters for an intense three-day writing binge in the hopes of impressing three judges.
The prize: a prestigious writing mentorship and a chance at literary notoriety.
An extra heaping teaspoon of scrutiny and analysis will be put on these finalists, as this is the first year the 3-Day Novel Contest will be televised. Book Television will feature regular live updates throughout the contest, both on the tube and online.
While the event will, at times, have a rather high-pressure, circus atmosphere, both the finalists and Book Television do nothing but benefit from it.
“As much as they’re using me to make entertaining television, I can use them to maybe get my name out there a little bit,” Hiemstra speculates. “At the same time, I don’t want to be the Sugar Jones of the literary world once this thing is done. I want there to be some legitimacy to my work.”
Book Television, along with show producer Tate Young, will be taking a smart, almost parodist approach to the broadcast.
“There’s sort of a parody element to reality television,” Young says. That component, along with what he calls “a sporting feel,” is what could make this contest a delightful addiction.
Contestants will have access to a video “confessional” booth throughout the weekend, but will also have to participate in a number of small challenges. It’s like someone took a blender, threw in Big Brother, the Ironman marathon and War and Peace, and out came Book Television presents the 3-day Novel Contest.
Writers from all over the country, each with their own unique literary penchant and flavour, will be participating in an event so oddly extreme, there isn’t an ESPN-type station out there that would know what to do with it.
Each and every writer has the freedom to create any type of novel they wish. The only catch? It needs to be publishable.
Along with Vancouver freelance writer/editor Jenn Farrell (Sugar Bush and Other Stories), Edmonton literary mainstays Todd Babiak and Minister Faust will be on hand to review and judge each finalist’s finished novel.
Contestants, like Hiemstra, will have been preparing for days before the event. While knowing at least the general direction you want to take your novel in and how many pages you are aiming to write are all pinnacles of concern, the importance of being physically prepared is not to be taken lightly. Well, “prepared” is more of a relative term.
“I’m a bit of an insomniac, and I’m not sure if that qualifies me as physically fit,” Hiemstra says. “In terms of being physically fit, the fact that I’m actually not is sort of an advantage to me.”
Fellow contestant Tyler Morency concurs. Sleep, as he knows it, may not be inevitable.
“I guess we’ve got a room full of cots, and that doesn’t seem really that copasetic to rest,” Morency says. “As far as sleep is concerned, I think I’m going to try and sleep as little as possible.”
But as we look past the broadcast, past the challenges, past the sleep deprivation, we see, in essence, the creation of art.
Each writer has proven to be worthy of a literary challenge that few face. Who will rise to the challenge? Who will prove that the creation of a publishable, engaging novel can happen in a 72-hour period? V