Sep
5
2006
The Raving Poets and the Three Day Novel Gong Show
This past Saturday, The Raving Poets experience played a part in the madness that was Book Television's 3 Day Novel reality show, a televised version of the long-standing 3 Day Novel Contest, the literary equivalent of extreme sport. For the TV version of the contest, Book TV found twelve writers from across Canada (mostly from Edmonton) and plunked them in the middle of a Chapter's Book Store for three days. The contestants had to stay in the store (yes, even sleep there - in bunk beds) for the entire time. They had 72 hours to write a novel (roughly 100 pages of text). Trust me, that's no small feat. They also had to contend with cameras in their face at all times, each other's idiosyncrasies, the stress of pounding out about 40 pages of prose per day, and a wealth of sadistic "challenges" thought up by the tyrant producers of this thing. Think of Survivor crossed with American Idol, and you've got an idea of what this thing was all about. Check the site for a complete rundown.
On Saturday evening, The Raving Poets Experience was one of the aforementioned challenges. The aspiring novelists had to do an impromptu reading of an excerpt of their work in progress - with the backing of the Raving Poets Band. Reading an unpolished work in public can be daunting enough, but throw in the added edge of improv backing music and you've got a really crazy/surreal situation. Fortunately, the novelists all rose to the challenge. They kicked out genuinely great performances, even a few amazing ones. And the band. The RP band was incredible. Considering that these guys hadn't played together in months, they really kicked it out. Huge kudos to the band and all the performers. At the end of it, the novelists were judged on their performance by the one and only Minister Faust, who turned "Simon Cowell" on the group and got downright nasty with a few contestants, but also dished out high praise for a few great performers. Ron Yamauchi and Mar'ce Merrel (who was the winner of this particular challenge) in particular were amazing.
In all, the whole Three Day Novel Reality Show felt just a wee bit south of insane. Writing a novel in three days is crazy enough, but doing it on national TV is madness. My heartfelt sympathies went out to all the contestants, even though they volunteered for that shit.
It was a truly unique gig for the RP's, and thanks goes out to Tate Young from Book Television for inviting us down to do our thing. It was a blast.
