INUVIK - For the eighth-straight Labour Day weekend Lavona Clarke will be submitting herself to the ultimate grind of writing a 100-page novel in three days.

Sound tough? Well Clarke will be the first one to attest to the torture of it all.

Lavona Clarke will endeavour once again to write a book over the Labour Day weekend. - Andrew Rankin/NNSL photo

"By the end of Saturday, you're totally frustrated," she said with a laugh. "You think everything you've written is crap; you're nowhere near the point where you thought you'd be. You want to go to bed and say 'I'm never doing this again.'"

The Inuvik resident is once again entering the three-day international writing showdown called the 3-Day Novel Contest. Contestants start writing at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5, and must stop by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, Sept 7. Everyone is supposed to abide by the honour system, which means all the writing and editing must occur within the time limit. Contestants generally write about 100 pages.

Like every other year, Clarke will go to bed early Friday evening and get down to business at about 2 or 3 a.m. Saturday.

"My most productive time is Sunday. That's when I put in 16 hours. Monday I try to be done late afternoon because the editor in me won't let it go out without editing."

The former assistant editor and writer for Up Here Magazine will try to devote more time to writing this year.

Once finished, she and her fellow participants mail their manuscripts to be judged by a team of editors and writers. The grand prize winner gets his or her work published, second prize is $500 and third prize is $100, but everyone gets a participation award. The 3-Day Novel website has a chat room devoted to participants who need a place to vent, or to share ideas and offer support.

Clarke said the beauty of the event is that it celebrates literature and writing while uniting people across the globe.

Clarke was first introduced to the competition by her daughter who was attending university in Edmonton. The pair signed up and the rest is history.

She admits her first attempt was awful.

"My first novel was the worst one. They're all like your little children, but I read that one and I think this one must have been adopted," she said with a laugh. "It was too out there and weird. It was more about finding out the technique and trying to cope with the pressure.

"It's a challenge. I love a challenge."

Clarke's written novels range from a girl's adventures while hitchhiking down the Mackenzie Highway, to another woman's ordeal being stranded on an island.

The contest also allows contestants to prepare an outline, which she does. But Clarke quickly finds that her plots usually develop lives of their own.

"It doesn't matter whether I have an outline or I have an idea of how the novel develops, it usually gets thrown out the window. One year I intended to write a story about a little boy, then I ended up writing about a little girl who committed suicide. The character was there and she was just supposed to be a walk-on but she took over. So it's weird, but that's why it's fun to do."

She would love to get published but she's OK with the feeling of "accomplishment" she gets from getting the job done. She gets some encouragement from her nephew's wife who has a doctorate in English literature and sees talent in her fellow wordsmith.

Somewhere in the back of her mind Clarke still wonders whether she'll take her passion to the next level.

"Maybe when I'm retired that's what I'm supposed to do," she said. "Maybe this is just practice."