Marathon Madness?

What have I gotten myself into? I must be mad. This weekend I’m participating in the Muskoka Novel Marathon. A whole 72 hours to do nothing but write. A novel. And I’ve never written one before. (I don’t think that fantasy adventure I started writing in high school should count, do you? Besides, I quit after about 2,000 words.)

I’ve always had some excuse to myself for not writing a novel even though I have plenty of half baked ideas. So the fact that I’ve committed myself to devoting three days to writing a crappy novel first draft scares me. Okay, I will have to sleep in there and I have to minus the time to attend my niece’s wedding. But that still leaves me a decent two and a half days. And I’ll be in a room full of other writers all doing the same thing! Will it be intimidating or motivating to see everyone around me writing away? I guess I'll find out.

But here’s the other great component to this event: we’re all raising money for the Simcoe-Muskoka YMCA’s literacy programs. All participants are asked to collect donations for the YMCA. Here is my Canada Helps donation page where online donations are accepted (if you take that as a hint or invitation I won't object) and you get an instant tax receipt.

Between my paper pledges and my online donation form it looks like I’ve reached my minimum fundraising goal. That makes me happy. Now here’s hoping at a minimum I can get some ideas flowing this weekend, and keep them flowing for the whole event and beyond. That would make me very happy. And maybe, at a minimum, I would prove to myself that I'm not mad.