| A Calgary creative writing student has won the annual Three-Day Novel contest sponsored by Anvil Press. Geoff Bromhead’s novel Struck tells the tale of a drifter repeatedly hit by lightning, who is chased across the country by a scientist and a spy. With his win, Bromhead joins former three-day laureates such as Tom Walmsley and b.p. nichol. The grand prize is an offer of publication from Anvil.
Bromhead is completing his B.A. in English, and is studying creative writing with University of Calgary professor Aritha van Herk. He heard about the contest through a classmate in a writing course he took a few years ago. "It wasn’t as exhausting as I expected," Bromhead says. "The momentum of the piece carried me through." Still, he found the act of staring at his computer all day and all night did leave him "in some kind of altered state of mind."
Writing a novel in three days, even a short novel, taught Bromhead a few things about the writing process. He sat down with several preliminary ideas already sketched out. He knew who the characters would be and how the action would get started. However, the ending remained a mystery to him until the very end of the process. Finally, he says, "it just sort of presented itself."
For Bromberg, the interesting part of the experience had to do with making decisions about the writing along the way. Bromberg says another student who entered the contest said that you really had to trust your decisions, but he found that trust, and even anything like normal decision-making, didn’t enter into it. Instead, "you just go right though a decision," he says.
Bromberg is looking forward to the novel’s publication in the fall, especially since it will be his first, but for now he’s trying not to think about what will happen after he takes his final classes this summer. "I’m avoiding that decision so far," he says. "I’ll keep writing and hopefully it takes me somewhere."
For more details on the 3-Day Novel contest and past winners see www.anvilpress.com/3daynov/.
Also, see the listings pages in this issue for details on this week’s literary events, including: After Hours – POETaster, a Saturday night spoken word series starting January 25; Winnipeg fiction writer Alissa York’s reading at McNally Robinson on Tuesday, January 28 at 7:30 p.m.; and, in a rare appearance, Catriona Strang’s reading from her highly charged poetry on Tuesday, January 28 at 7 p.m. in Annex C, Alberta College of Art and Design (1407 - 14 Ave. N.W.). |
