I’m kind of hoping that everyone is going to continue to end every chapter with a cliffhanger. What a great novel that would be! No slow, boring build up, no graceful decline, just all cliffhanger, all the time.
Remembering all the minute details of each chapter and trying to keep everything consistent has emerged as a challenge. We had to talk last night about whether or not certain errors would be fixed retroactively by some nominated continuity captain, or just allowed to stand. We decided that errors such as these went with the territory of writing fast, and fixing them would be dishonest. So if you notice something inconsistent, don’t hate, we only bein’ real.
Here’s some basic background about what’s going on and where we are right now in the process:
Day 0: In October all 5 of us wrote introduction, they were voted on, and Yale’s mobster errand from Chicago to Iowa City was chosen. We decided as a reward we’d let Yale take the first day.
Day 1: Yale leaves Matt (me) with a cliffhanger in which our 2 main characters are just about to abduct the dentist, who owes $50k to somebody important.
Day 2: I decide it would be fun to pay the favor forward to Drew, putting our two gamblers in the dentist’s kitchen, about to play a game of cards…you know, with their lives at stake.
Day 3: Drew develops the characters, suspends the action for just a moment
Day 4: Tara comes down with the flu, sends in Yale to pinch write. Our main character loses all the games to the, apparently cheating, dentist, and seems to be getting recruited to go to work for the dentist rather than getting tossed into the back seat of his girlfriend’s car to die of complications from the heart attack he’s been pretty much having all day.
Day 5: That’s today! Paul is writing, somewhere, something, and tomorrow morning we will see it on the site. Is Cervetti doomed to lose his girlfriend and his life in Chicago in order to join his former partner Stan in doing the dirty bidding of the dentist?
We shall see.
So Friday 11/5 is Paul, today, Saturday 11/6 is Tara (filling in for Yale, who filled in for her yesterday), and Sunday 11/7 is me again. Can’t wait. I guess there is a write-in going on at the Iowa City Public Library from 3-5 on that day, maybe I’ll go see who’s down there. Not sure how I feel about writing with company, but I’m sure those that are doing this month on their own are going to be really glad for any semblance of support and community and I-am-not-alone that they can muster.
Good luck to all of you out there doing this on your own. Much respect!!!
