I set my alarm to 7:00am this morning and then also asked for a wake up call. Apparently, I had a very vivid dream about my wake up call, because a few minutes after my alarm woke me up, I got my wake up call from the front desk, and I told him I’d already gotten it. This led to about five minutes of very awkward, confused conversation. Weird.

Tim and Kathy spoke a little about the business of writing, conventions, and how to behave professionally. I ended up taking about five pages of notes (which I will post later). We discussed idea generation for the 24 hour story, which basically consisted of three parts. 1) We were each give a random object. My writing twin (which is the person sitting at the same table as you), Schon Zwakman got a green button that said “Bring Back Misty Dawn” on it, while I got a bowlegged Indian chief who swilved at the hips. Horrible. 2) We we sent down to the library to do research. Literally, we were told to wander the stacks and pick out books that looked interesting. We were told to pick out books >beside< books that looked interesting. We were told to run our fingers down the shelves and stop on a book whose spine felt interesting. You get the point. It was an interesting exercise. 3) I’ll return to this presently.

We were told to be back at the workshop at 1:30, so we left for lunch at 12:15 (plenty of time). We went to this burrito bar on Hollywood boulevard. We told them we were in a rush right away, but by 12:45 our food still hadn’t arrived. We told them to bring the cheques right away so we could settle up, but she only brought half of them and then forgot about it. by 1:00pm I went down to the front desk to cancel our order, but right at that moment, our food started to come up. We ate like fiends, while we were waiting for the rest of our bills to show up, but at 1:15pm they >still< hadn’t come. So we sent Matt and Schon ahead to tell Tim and Kathy we’d be late. We didn’t end up getting back until 2:00pm.

Those of you who know me know that I am almost obsessive compulsive about punctuality. I was chewing the furniture by this time. From now on, we’ll be known at the WotF that was late back from lunch. This is not a good thing.

Back to part 3. In the afternoon, we were sent out to meet a stranger. We were not allowed to tell them we were writers, or on an assignment or anything. We were suppose to engage in conversation and find out as much as we could. This was an exercise we all dreaded.

I started in a pharmacy thinking I’d corner a security guard or a shelf stocker or something, but no dice. I was way too busy. Then I stopped at a cafe thinking that it would be full and I would be forced to share a table with someone. It miraculously emptied out right when I got there. Finally, after wandering the streets for a while I got a brainstorm. Call a cab!!! Cab drivers will talk your ear off. So I stopped at a cab stand and asked him to take my to the Hollywood library (the only place I knew down here that was a significant, but not crazy, cab ride away). He was unimpressed. He didn’t want to lose his place in line for a five dollar fare, so he pretended he’d never heard of it (even told me it didn’t exist) and offered to take me to the LA public library which was $25 dollars away (which meant it was $40 either way). So I left in frustration.

I needed a destination that was far enough away that a cab driver would take me, but not far enough that it would bankrupt me. So I went into a convinience store and asked for a destination that was about 10 minutes away by car in any direction. This was a confusing but funny question, but when I explained my reasons he bought into the conspiracy and told me to ask to be taken to Hollywood and Vine. Attempt number 2: I approached a cab driver with this destination. Still not far enough. He wouldn’t take me. The cab idea was a bust.

Idea number four: a city bus! People are always sitting together, relatively trapped until the next station. I’d be that creepy guy who doesn’t get the hint that you don’t want to talk to people on the bus! I found a station and got onto a bus that was going downtown, they sat in the back and tried to start up a conversation with a middle aged Hispanic man. Language barrier. No dice. I got off at the next stop, disappointed.

There was a young African American man sitting at the stop listening to an iPod, so I quite cleverly asked him for directions to the Chinese Theatre (which was across from our hotel), and then started up a conversation that way. Success! Turns out he was a hard right Republican who had a low opinion (bargain basement low) of Obama, ran a magazine that said as much, and hung out with the less rich relatives of famous people. All I had to do was occassionally say “Yeah, no kidding” and he held forth for 45 minutes. I think 10 buses went by, and I kept wondering which one was his. I had to get back to ASI by 4:30pm and by this time I was starting to get nervous, so I excused myself, but then he offered to escort me back to the Chinese Theatre. Thank goodness I’d told him that my destination was somewhere close by! I tried to excuse myself several times, but he walked me all the way back to the theatre. When he began helping me hunt for the “friend” I was supposed to meet, I had to just mumble a goodbye and duck into the crowd that was there for a Sandra Bullock release and disappear. I made it back to ASI just on time.

We were given a few more words of wisdom, and then turned loose to write our story in 24 hours using the object, the research, and our conversation!

That evening the first place winners were interviewed by Shaun Farrell from Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. I’m a fan of Shaun’s podcast, so this was a real thrill. Despite some technical problems with the phone, eventually we gathered around and Shaun asked us all kinds of questions about our backgrounds and our careers and asked us to sum up our stories. I stumbled over my words once or twice, but I think I handled my newbie jitters reasonably well.

After that, it was pure writing except for a quick break to meet my roommate, Stephen Kotowych, the Grand Prize winner from two years ago. Stephen is a great guy with a lot of thoughts on the contest to share. His primary piece of advice was “write a speech!” If you’ve seen his acceptance video you’ll know why. He’d been told by Jerry Pournelle that he hadn’t won, so he didn’t prepare one, and the award caught him off guard. I intend to write one, even though at this point, it seems like everyone is talking about Emery Huang’s story. I give myself 10% odds. If the winner is determined by the story that no one ever mentions, then I’m a shoo-in.

I had a 1500 word false start, and finished writing for the night at 2am, having set my alarm for 6am. See you tomorrow!

Tags: Workshop, Writers of the Future