On the DU Writing Programs First Annual 72 Hour Writing Contest
Carol Samson

A few years ago, I learned of the 3-Day Novel Contest which happens over the Labor Day weekend. In that contest, sponsored by a Canadian company, writers have 72 hours to produce a novel, and the winning novel is published. Contestants are told to drink lots of water, do exercises, and breathe deeply to maintain sanity. A friend of mine tried it every year, renting a room at a hotel downtown and locking herself away from family and responsibility for three days. Though she never won, she always told me that it was a great stretch of imagination kind of project. Last year, as a faculty member in the Writing Program, I was doing my writing consultant tasks in the Writing Research Center, and, in an off moment, I spoke with an English Department PhD candidate named Shannon Mullaly. She told me that she had won the 2004 Canadian contest by writing an epistolary novel with a friend (collaboration is allowed). So, this year when the Co-Curricular Writing committee was brainstorming for ideas to create more writing situations on campus, I suggested that we try the same sort of contest. The Committee agreed and volunteered to judge. This being the first year of the contest, we were happy to receive six (6) entries. The judges read the works knowing that the rules of a 72-Hour writing trek would mean that we would receive stories that would need editing, but that we would read for the quality of the prose, the character development, the dialogue even as the writers wrestled with Time and sleeplessness.

The entries ranged from robot/computer science fiction, to fantasy, to languid meditations, to humor and to tragedy. The winners are as follows:

1st Place: Eric Peterson, Salt Water" [PDF]
2nd Place: Nate Knife, Night Clerks
3rd Place: Kevin Bell, A Place Under the Stars

The judges liked Salt Water because of its attention to language which one judge found textured and unpredictably rich at times. We found it a fine narrative intent on exploring meta-fictional spaces. The second place winner, Night Clerks, is quirky and deadpan funny, a sort of spin-off, as one judge saw it, of Clerks. In the 3rd place winner, we saw a young writer trying to reconcile two moments in the life of a young couple: a proposal and honeymoon set against an automobile accident.

The prize-winning story, Salt Water, [PDF] is a frame story. Central to its meaning is the transcription of a diary, part dream, part philosophy, all surreal. The diary is a prose poem, the written text of a man afloat in signs and symbols, a searcher self sorting out memory and loss.

Here is a sampling from Eric Petersons work:

Nevertheless, I am here, and I am moving. The sea is calm. No winds blow upon it, and no waves rock me back and forth. It is as flat and as calm as a resting glass of wine but as reflective as a mirror. It is uniformly a lighter blue, much like the color of the sea one sees in tourist ads. The air is neither bitter nor pure, though the sea is so salted that I fear taking a drink. The sun burns me not, though it keeps me warm. No storm passes me. Land rarely makes its appearance on the horizon, and even if it did, I have no means of paddling to it. There are no artificial sources of light, and so the night is filled with stars, nodding.

You must be thinking my time spent here is a bore, but you are incorrect, for I am not alone. Yes, I am alone, on my raft, but I am not alone on the sea. It would be ignorant to think that I am the only one lost at sea.

I am unsure of when I first became cognizant, when I became self-aware. My realization developed much like the memory of a child. Its entirely possible that I was floating for some time before I became aware of it. And although I cannot pinpoint the exact moment in time of the beginning of my journey, I am able to recall one event which took me from floating to floating with direction.

I saw, coming toward me, another raft. Because there is no point of reference other than my raft and his raft, I cannot be sure of whether I was moving toward him, or he was moving toward me, or if either of us were stationary, but from my frame of reference, he was sailing toward me. He arrived lazily, neither rushing, nor dragging, though I suppose he had no control over it. When we were within shouting distance, I saw that he glanced at me briefly and looked at me with curious eyes but did not speak.

"It should be expected that I was anxious. I did not know what to do. Was I to talk to him? Was I to throw myself overboard and swim to him? Was he to do either? Was it proper for me to return the glance? How many manners I must have ignored in this strange world.

Before I could react, I noticed that the man had looked back down at his raft. He began whistling a song. The melody was familiar, nothing special about it, but surely memorable. It had a haunting quality to it it would never leave me. The vastness and openness of the sea allowed for the sound to be carried to me unaltered. There was no sound to mix with it, and there was no object impeding its movement toward me. It was pure, it rang True to me. I had lost awareness, and all that was left was the sound. And although his whistling produced only higher pitches which my ear could pick up, I somehow felt it within me, like one feels the lowest basses at an orchestral performance, or when one feels a strong emotion. The melody echoed through me.

When I regained awareness, the mans raft had already passed behind me, but the melody remained within me. I had it committed to a form of memory, not quite memory itself, but something similar to instinct. Muscle memory of sorts. This was the beginning.

Looking back on it, it was actually pretty surreal. I wouldnt consider myself a musician, nor would I consider myself an avid fan of music, especially of just a melody being whistled, and yet something about it struck me. I cannot recall any other details about the man or his raft.

I cannot even begin to describe for you the melody. I could perhaps show you a chart of how it would look written out, or perhaps I could describe for you the pitches it cycles through, however doing so would not bring it justice. You would not be able to recognize the beauty of it. Instead, I may focus entirely on the beauty of it, and perhaps describe it to you through metaphor or simile. I could use diction or any literary device to attempt to provide you with an understanding of the melody and its power; however I could not not merely due to my lack of proficiency in this field, but also because, although you would have a clear understanding of the power of the melody, you would not have the melody itself, and even the power is open to interpretation.

The young writer speaks of essences, of muscle memory, of art as non-discursive moment. He reminds us of the ineffable, of melodies we can only know by analogy, and at the same time he is working with meta-fiction, demonstrating the process of making story even as he makes his story.

All in all this was a valuable contest experience. It is part of the Writing Programs attempt to set up opportunities for out of the classroom writing experiences. We sponsor the Open Mic nights in the Pub which happens twice a quarter. We are working with the Botanic Gardens to hold an Open Mic in the Botanic Gardens on May 12, 2008. We are also planning a competitive Grammar Bee wherein teams will compete by correcting grammatically incorrect sentences and all monies will be donated to the Colorado Literacy Project. We sponsor informal creative writing workshops once a month in the evening. We hope to set up seminars on publication and to continue to encourage the undergraduates at DU to explore the possibilities that writing offers.

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