Preliminary Warnings to Friends and Family of Impending Three Days and What is to Be Expected From Them All
This, although a relatively short section, is of vital importance. In fact, before taking any steps suggested, perhaps assemble all who are to be affected during the long weekend and simply ask: “Friend or Foe?” Foes, if adults, may be dismissed from the area—the house, apartment, or whatever. If children, they may be shipped away from the war zone feigning “their own good” as a reason.
Important: Don’t try to be fair.
It stands to reason if you’re married or in any relationship that the onus of responsibility for any help you will need will fall on that partner’s shoulders. This “help” is another positive reason for writing your novel at your own place. As for anyone else hanging around that weekend, “Remain quiet, please.” is the basis of all requests and/or commands you will make of them. As for that special partner, it will be easy enough for you once in the throes of writing frenzy to simply issue requests directly to them and allow him or her to designate as they see fit.
The most you will wish to do is stick your head out the door. This arrangement is a godsend for meals, snacks, maintaining supplies, taking messages and generally holding your life together while you, in fact, desert it for three days. The experiences of past contestants, especially mothers, speak very highly of this part of the contest. Although, at the beginning, the children and the, say, “male helper” may band together in a quite unbecoming gang of thugs who will demand that mom return to her duties, as the weekend progresses and they become weaker from missed and mismanaged meals and itch and scratch in their own filth in the outer room, they will slowly begin a new appreciation of the woman behind that locked door writing her brains out.