Wrapped up my last story for the Storyball, which, appropriately enough, is the last story (chronologically/sequentially recorded) for the Storyball. Woot! A fun time, and quite different in tone the first "Land's End" storyball. Good times.

It will be interesting to see how the next one works out. Because I'm sure there will be one.

Thanks, Doyce!

(Link to follow once there's consensus about making it all public.)

After the last overindulgent batch of heady creative work, the Muse kind of left me hanging with "Gin Blossoms" -- and I found myself with a Gaimanesque pastiche with very little to recommend it, no real change or progress to the main story made, yet another mystical character thrown into the pot, and ... well ... not much there there.

On the other hand, it was another 1500 words, so what the heck.

Last round coming up is the Epilog, ostensibly tomorrow. Not sure what I'm going to do with that. At least I'm caught up.

Very, very weird.

Last evening, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my next installment of the Midway storyball. It was getting late, and I was wrapping things up and I was reading some of the new stuff. I went to the Cast of Characters page (which was a triffic idea, whosever it was) and realized there were a couple of gaps.

So i started filling them in. And I put a bit here, and a bit there, and filled in some stuff from one of the background stories Ana had written, I think.

And found a contradiction. In stories A and B, it was mentioned that it was Cruickshank who had won the property and built the initial Midway. But Kate had just written a fabulous tale around the founding of the Midway (using a title I'd thrown out there), and it identified Ronald Oberst as the guy behind it.

Now, given the nature of these storyballs, you get contradictions. It's not going to be letter-perfect, right? But it bugged me. Especially since those names were familiar, and the more I dug, the more they showed up in different places.

Now, why would that be? What was the truth?

I am not one of those folks who obsessively reads every story in these storyballs and tries to tie it together. Indeed, it's usually too complex for me to follow without a lot of effort, so I read things for what they are, enjoy the impression of teach tale, get an occasional "Aha!" recollection, and leave it at that. Margie's the one in our pair who absorbs all these bits and then nods and says, "The butler did it, obviously," just like it was a mystery movie.

But in this case I was reading along and putting down stuff in the Cast page and getting the Obersts and the Cruickshanks straight, and it suddenly just hit me. I saw the pattern. I knew what was going on, really going on!

The irony is that I was suddenly seized with a fervor like I was some conspiracy theorist who's finally figured out how the assassination of JFK and the destruction of the Challenger were, actually, and incontrovertably, connected. Everywhere I turned, I started seeing connections, things that tied the Big Story together, mere coincidences that now were intentional.

Take names. I did Google lookups on the meaning of Cruickshank and Oberst, and it all fit! Hell, I looked at the meaning of McIntyre and it fit. I looked at ideas people, different people, had thrown out there, some of them intentional, some of them just in passsing, and they abruptly fit into another great pattern.

Now, that's the thing, of course. Some of it was intentional. Some of it wasn't. I really don't think that the first person who mentioned Ron Oberst really chose the name intentionally. Certainly not with an intention that let me tie it to Yggdrasil and angels and Nietzche. That's not a pattern that's really there.

But the brain is a fabulous thing, truly fabulous. We're pattern-seekers. Patterns in what's around us help us survive. "Hmmmm ... leopard prints, a dark patch of jungle ahead, a low rumble -- must be dangerous ahead, let's not go gather berries over there." And, of course, we therefore impose patterns that aren't there, hence cloud-watching and conspiracy theorizing.

But it was beautiful, beautiful the way it all fit together (and you can always find ways to get all the really weird stuff together). And I was Googling and writing and taking notes and copying paragraphs out of old stories and I felt like one of those guys who covers their apartment wall with Post-It notes and pieces of string and newspaper clippings, all of which show how the Girl Scouts engineered the 2000 election results, as part of their great war against the Illuminati and their task masters in IBM. I was seized by a fervor ...

... and even when I was done, awake far too late (especially since I had to get up at 4:30a to get to the airport) and shut things down and turned off the light and lay down and closed my eyes, I was still thinking about it. In fact, after two minutes, I turned on the lights again and scribbled an added bit on a pad of paper by the bed.

If I had thought I could finish it, I'd have been tempted to try and kick it out, t'hell with going to bed.

The real irony thus becomes that I wrote a story about someone who had figured out the truth (or had it told to her) and was being driven mad by the whole thing, rambling from connection to connection, just as I had been -- though, to be sure, in a dramatically rising fashion. But life was imitating art a wee too closely. "Write what you know," as they say.

So was up at 4:30a. I was sitting at the gate to my flight to Manchester by 6a. I pulled out the notebook ... and started writing.

I wrote for close to an hour there, then another thirty minutes on the plane down, then sitting at the waiting area in Manchester. I spotted an outlet at a Starbucks and bought a Macchiato and went and sat over there, but the outlets were unpowered. Rats.

But I had a three hour layover for an 11:05a flight, so that gave me time. I sat there and furiously typed, trying to get it finished and posted before I left, knowing I could get a WiFi connection, and fearful, perhaps, that the plane would get shot down by those Girl Scouts (or "Girl Guides" as they're cunningly called) and their shoulder-mounted missiles as guided by the space satellites and ...

I got the story finished. I signed in. I did some quick lookups, added a couple of bits, realize ...

... well, realized I had the narrative a bit off. The story teller who was giving over a lot of this info, the person who I'd decided was the instigator of the tale, hadn't actually been talking to my protagonist, but someone else. My protagonist had shown up briefly to get a kiss, but that was all.

Well, not too hard to get around that, and not a lot of time to figure it out. I worked out something, tacked on an ending ...

... well, that's the trick, isn't it? Anyone can come up with a great story idea, but it actually has to wrap up at the end.

I quickly posted, including a few formatting and spelling errors, shut down the machine, and raced for the gate, getting there around 10:30a, as boarding had already begun.

Whew!

It was weird. I talk about the Muse, sometimes, seizing control. It really felt this way this time. The idea seized me, and, obsessive-compulsive, I had no choice but trail along behind, filling in the details. God help me if I ever get a real conspiracy theory under my skin.

Now, of course, is the story any good? I have no idea -- I need to check it out tonight and see if it holds together as well as it felt like writing it. Getting so involved in the underlying story bits was unusual for me, and I'm not sure if it's a strength. And then there's the whole social thing of, possibly, stomping all over someone else's story idea. That's another reason, I think, I tend not to be a Prime Mover in these things, preferring to hover on the periphery, tossing in occasional ideas, or nudges, but letting others come up with What's Really Going On.

And ... well, heck, it's just as likely that someone else will come up with something that obsoletes what I've written, no matter how clever. That's the danger and joy of the collaborative process, half cooperation, half competition.

Having great fun. Weird, sometimes, but fun.

Started this story back in Colorado, and finished it in Glasgow, with writing in Chicago and over the Atlantic and Manchester and over Scotland along the way.

The biggest worry about being "clever" in writing is never being quite sure how obvious one is. Too obvious, and the audience simply groans. Not obvious enough, and they just scratch their heads and you're never quite sure why they missed the mark, and damned if you can just explain the joke ...

No joke in "Saturday Night Rush," though it turned from a Leilani story about the (very real, if you've ever experienced it) restaurant meal rush into something about a pair of characters who, if I've done my job right, the reader figures out, oh, three-quarters of the way through, with a loud, "Ohhhhhh!"

It was fun to write, and if the opportunity arises, I may actually do something further with them in the story being told. Though, in general, I hate screwing with the meta-flow of these things (believe it or not).

Many thanks (though the indirect inspiration was not recognized until after I'd gone down this road a ways) to Neil Gaiman.

Finally finished "Dragon's Lair," which contains at least two co-worker names, two hidden movie references, and an unintended-when-originally-written video game mention. The Muse sort of abandoned me after getting me started with the tale, which forced me into choosing one of several conclusions I had in mind. I also realized that the odd tie I'd intended to "Misanthrope" simply didn't work.

Oh, well. Fun enough for government work.

So I had the title chosen for the next Storyball tale, and had a general idea of what I was doing with it, and that was all okay and all was sweetness and light and ...

... WHAM.

That was the sound the Muse slamming a mini-sledge right below the point on the back of my skull, then dragging me off into the bushes and making me have my way with her. Which translates into a comletely different story that required a different title and ... all ... different ...

It was all I could do to finish lunch and my walk and get some work done before I sat down and cranked out far too many words heading toward either something simple and straightforward or something fun that descends into darkness and blood. Knowing how the Midway's been working, my money's on the latter.

*sigh*

I used to get in trouble in college for turning in papers that were significantly longer than the assignment called for. So for me to get an assignment in the Storyball to generate a 900 (or so) word short story is ...

... well, let's just say the first round I did 2000-odd.

This round, I did 4500.

It's actually a problem, as much as folks kind of chuckled about it. It means I take longer (burn more time, and thus am more reluctant to start anything) to produce what I need to, and it usually means it's bloated with excess narrative and description and the like. I easily need to chop a good 20-40% off of everything I write. Unfortunately, my rewrite cycles tend to actually add words.

I was pleased with this story ("Paradise in the Dashboard Lights"), sort of. It's full of parallel structures and shifting PoVs and weirdness and one big unanswered question at the end (which may, or may not, stay unanswered). I'm pleased with the execution -- but, in the end, it's just a literary conceit, not a good story per se. It's a "see how clever I am" and, hopefully, is entertaining as such.

But when I look at what other folks are cranking out, some of it's just scarily brilliant.

There's a lot more on that topic simmering away somewhere. But don't mind me -- I'm in one of my Salieri moods ... :-)

Wrote the first contribution to the April 2006 Storyball, which is set in the truck stop complex called Midway.

Worried, as always, that I'd not be able to write enough. And then turned in 2,535 words rather than the recommended 900.

Not all that great a story, but I had fun with it. And it let me set a stamp of my own on the place. For what it's worth, I cut out a whole bunch of character backstory and a whole mess of description as to what I see Midway looking like.

It's kind of interesting, this first round, reading how folks dive into the story -- which directions they take things, etc. Especially since so many of the stories become stubs for others to build upon (under the Storyball rules).

Next installment on Saturday; I'll probably read the remaining Round One tales (due tomorrow), then decide on a title/stub I want to build off of for my next. And I have a flight Thursday night I can use toward the effort.

Should be fun to watch this month unroll. And, in the interest of not making folks self-conscious, I'll not be posting the URL here until it's all done.

As an amusing side note, when Doyce was writing the original example story titles back in the November '05 rendition, he used "Misanthrope" as one of the sample story titles, and "The Cornerpost Ghost" as another. When this story collection started, he dibsed the former title, so I decided it would be amusing to choose the latter -- especially since it gave me a great idea ...

Doyce is finishing up prep work in the wiki for the April storyball. I'm not going to link to it from here (yet); those who need to know can probably find it, and those who don't will just have to wait. :-)

It should be interesting. All the business travel I'm doing should either make it really easy or really hard, or maybe both.

I have to reread the rules.

I'm looking forward to it.