24 - Wednesday, August 28, 1981 ~ North Shore News

Three days in
writer’s hell

Pulp Press Annual 3-Day Novel Contest Winners.

of literary ambition, be warned; the dies irae, the Days

F YOU'RE covertly or overtly possessed by the demon

of Wrath and Reckoning are once more at hand: the
14th annual Pulp Press 3-Day Novel Contest, the world’s
only literary marathon, will be held this Labor Day
Weekend and there’s no better way to find out if you’ve got

the Right Stuff.

As befits a marathon, the rules
are deceptively simple; as in
“just run 26 miles as fast as you
can, OK?”’

Hey, Kids! Get Your Kicks With The Vancouver 86er’s and Bobby
Lenarduzzi. KickStarters is a fun, free soccer clinic coming to a
community near you, courtesy of McDonald's. Join us for autographs
nd draws for prices, team posters, even free tickets. Fill out the form below
and bring it in soon to pre-register as space is limited. See you there!

In this case, you sit down to
keyboard, typewriter or quill and
parchment at 12:01 a.m. Saturday,
Aug. 31 and stop beeping, clatter-
ing or scribbling at midnight,
Monday, Sept. 2, and what hap-

pens in between is, if you're lucky, <John Moore

a short novel that goes on to
publication and fame, if not for-
tune.

You can use the week following
to have demented, indecipherable
hand-scrawled manuscripts typed
or disks electronically transformed
into hard copy, double spaced on
8%"x 11'’ white numbered pages
and accompanied by an informa!
affidavit by a long-suffering witness
affirming you actually spent the
last long weekend of summer do-
ing this instead of wind-surfing, ly-
ing on the beach or driving around
with the top down and the stereo
up, inflicting your musical
peculiarities on the maximum
number of neighborhoods.

(In lieu of affidavit, copies of
divorce proceedings, custody or
property settlements filed by irate
spouses/significant others, citing
Pulp Press and the contest as co-
respondenis are probably accept-
able.)

* Ifthe Animal Rights Movement
would let you chain a thousand
monkeys to typewriters indefinite-
ly, they'd produce the entire
works of Will Shakespeare, but
who'd want to read Hamlet, by O.
Rangouiang? .

Especially when sorne 500-odd
intelligent primates annually will
voluntarity submit to Three Days
in Writers’ Hell, risking radical
brain-fade and tuanel-syndrome
tendinitis. (writers’ cramp), to
produce brief but wildly original
novels.

Aglance at any of the previous
winners, available from Pulp Press
at between $5.95 and $7.95 is
worthwhile for its own sake, but
confirms that there is no “‘win-
ning formula.”

The only genre to win with any

consistency, (and three out of 13 is

hardly a2 convincing record) is
detective fiction, but even these
resembie each other like apples
and oranges: there’s Tom
Walmsey’s Dr.Tim, with its
background racket of anarchist

rock and roil, Pat Dobie’s Pawn To

Queen, featuring a hard-boiled
fernale detective, and last year’s
winner, Bill Dodds’ O Father, in
which a wanna-be mystery writer
and Jim Rockford fan becomes
embroiled in a real murder
mystery, aided by his three-year-
old daughter and a huge native

Complete fine of :
MOTOROLA E

Gall KEVIN Now!
"your cellular specialist”

TORE BOC

> 240-4064

4744 Kingsway, Bby., 436-3300

BOOK REVIEW

Indian sidekick named “Bingo
Bob.””

The majority of winners have
been as varied as Still, by avant-
garde poet bp Nichol, who also
wrote scripts for Fraggle Rock and
produced this lyrical, poignant ac-
count of an imploding relation-
ship, and a sci-fi collaboration by
two women writers atiout a bionic
street kid who'd give the Six Mil-
lion Dollar Man megabyte
nightmares.

North Van’s own Stephen
Miller's Wastefa/l, a surreal en-
vironmental ailegory about a man
living in a garbage dump, has been
optioned for film, with Miller do-
ing the screenplay; not too shabby
for three days in hell.

But, as with any great struggle,
winning is not the point here.

Just to finish the Boston mara-
thon, the Tour de France, the
\ronman Triathlon is a purely
personal triumph that transcends
the premise of competition, like
skiing the Sacdan Couloir without
winding up in traction.

Even if you don’t finish in the
time and wind up with 50 pages of
crazed hyperbolic prose, you
probably have the beginning of
something you should finish on
your own time.

There is a $7 entry fee to this
madhouse, which should be sent
to Pulp Press International, 100-
1062 Homer St. Vancouver, B.C.
V6B 2W9, before Aug. 30, 1991.
You can phone 687-4233 for addi-
tional information and en-
couragement.

PRE-REGISTRY DRAW |

Fill in this form and bring it to us here at the North
Shore News, 1139 Lonsdale Ave., V7M 2H4. Your
compieted form not only pre-registers your place
in the ciinic, it alsc makes you eligible for our
KickStarters’ prize draw. Prizes will be awarded
at the clinic you attend. So bring in this pre-
registry form today.

NAME:
AODRESS:
CITY/TOWN:
Postal Code:

Age: 6-7 __ B90 10-16

“Ask for your registration bracelet when dropping
off registration form.

4% )

CLINIC AGENDA

DATE: Friday, September 13
LOCATION: Loutet Park
(between 15th and 17th at
Grand Boulevard)

TIME: 6:30 p.m.

® Deadline for entries is
Monday, September 9 at
12 noon.

® Approximate length of clinic

is 2 hours.

* Autographs and prizes will
be awarded following clinic.

80,000 LAWN & PATIO FURNITURE |