Blogging Book-in-a-Day

Writing a children's book in 12 hours is mostly about stress and food, if lucystopflying is to be believed.—Sparkitors

Every year, my school runs a program for year 10s called Book-in-a-Day. We're given three characters (one of them non-human), a setting, and an issue, and we have 12 hours to write, illustrate, edit, and print a story, which will then be given to the local children’s hospital. After being warned that this would be the most fun yet stressful day of my life (and to come equipped with sugar and pencils), I decided to give Book-in-a-Day a try. This is how my day pans out.

7:45 a.m.-8 a.m: The five participating groups assemble at school. All seven of our group members turn up, sporting between us: 1 container of brownies, 1 chocolate fudge brownie cake, 2 large custard scrolls, 12 packets of instant noodles, 2.5 liters of coke, 12 cans of energy drink, 2 large chip packets and a packet of butterscotch. So I guess we have the sugar aspect sorted. At 8 o'clock we get our prompts and all hell breaks loose as we try to work out how to fit a skydiver, a carpenter, and a native (Australian) animal into a kids' book.
Total chapters written: 0/10
Time left: 12 hours

8 a.m.—11 a.m.: These three hours are spent frantically trying to organize some sort of plot line. We have many suggestions, ranging from "CIA agent with mistaken identity" to "someone gets covered in honey and ants in the middle of a desert." Eventually we do come up with a vague plot, which includes a skydiver called Skye Diver, a carpenter named Uncle Carpenter, and a gargantuan platypus.
Total chapters written: 0/10
Time left: 9 hours

11 a.m. —11:30 a.m.: We have recess with the rest of the school (who are not subjecting themselves to 12 hours of stress). It consists mainly of comments between participating groups, such as:
“How are you going?”
“What were your two characters?”
“We are so screwed.”
“Does your story really have a skydiver called Skye Diver?”
“Our plotline makes no sense!"
“YOU’VE WRITTEN 7 CHAPTERS ALREADY, IS YOUR GROUP ALL ROBOTS??”
Total chapters written: 0/10
Time left: 8 1/2 hours

11:30 a.m.—1:30 p.m.: After realizing we are seriously behind, our group decides to knuckle down and get some serious work done. Which we do, sort of, interspersed by arguments about platypuses, whether 10-year-olds know the meaning of the word "rambunctious," whether we could start eating the custard scrolls yet (all brownies and brownie cake have already been eaten), and other important matters.
Total chapters written: 4.5/10
Time left: 6 1/2 hours

1:30 p.m.–2 p.m.: Lunch. This pretty much follows the same pattern as recess, with a little more stressing out as WE ONLY HAVE 6 HOURS TO GO ZOMG (remember: deep breaths, deep breaths).
Total chapters written: 4.5/10
Time left: 6 hours

2 p.m.—3 p.m.: HOLY BAJEEBERS. Someone messed up the room bookings (not our teacher) and we only have access to two computers per group. Our group hasn’t had a computer the whole day, and had been planning on using this as our computer time. We're quite irritated. We start typing up our chapters with the computers we do have.
Total chapters written: 4.5/10 (all illustrations done though)
Time left: 5 hours

3 p.m.-5 p.m.: The rest of the school has left, so we get as many computers as we want, with everyone working pretty much the whole time. Or at least starting to work, then getting distracted, then getting yelled at by me and then continuing to work. Somehow, although we're based in a single room, certain members of our group keep going missing.
Total chapters written: almost 9/10
Time left: 3 hours

5 p.m.—6:40 p.m.: We finish chapters 2—10, rewrite chapter 1, and start editing. There are numerous eating breaks, some more arguments about the extensiveness a 10-year-old's vocabulary, and, in our first “finished” sheet, a sentence that ends with "vfjsibkniebveipb."
Total chapters written: 10/10 (YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY)
Time left: 1 hour, 20 minutes

6:40 p.m.-7 p.m.: Dinner. Our school has bought pizzas for the lot of us (45 kids spread over 5 groups, and 2 teachers). The news comes out that one group has already completely finished their book. Panic ensues in the remaining 4 groups.
Total chapters written: 10/10
Time left: 1 hour

7 p.m.—7:56 p.m.: Furious editing by me and one other girl in my group. We get through the whole book with an incredibly slow computer. (It didn’t crash in the last hour!!!!) and finally hand in our book with 4 minutes to go in our 12 hours. Go us.
Total books written: 1
Time left: 4 minutes

7:56 p.m.-8 p.m.: This 4 minutes consists of waiting for the physical copy of our book to finish photocopying, a lot of deep breaths, and eating the last of the food.

So Book-in-a-Day consisted of 30% eating, 30% writing, 30% stressing, and 10% yelling at people in my group. And we got out of it A Legendary Tale Of Epic Proportions.

Ever done a frenzied, short-term writing project? Were there pastries?

Related Post: Gear Up For National Novel Writing Month!

If this sounds entirely too hectic, you can always just eat all the food and write for SparkLife instead.