Can’t believe it’s over. Can’t believe how much MCM has produced in such a short time. It’s astounding.

So, some graphs.

His chapter-by-chapter word counts fluctuated pretty wildly; it seems every time he wrote a very long chapter, the following one tended to be quite short – whether because he was afraid of running out of time, or because it fitted the pacing better, who knows – and there was a slow downward trend towards the end, fitting both with panic, perhaps, as well as MCM’s general style of having shorter chapters towards the end of a book.

Looks like a crazy, inconsistent graph, right? But compare it to his total word count progress over time, and you find a pretty linear upward trend:

It’s impressive. And, yes, your eyes are working. MCM wrote over 50,000 words in three days. NaNoWriMo? Sooo last year.

Total Word Count: 50,156
Day 1 – 17,963
Day 2 – 15,557
Day 3 – 16,636

Average Word Count Per Chapter: 984
Day 1 – 1,123, with 16 chapters written
Day 2 – 1,111, with 14 chapters written
Day 3 – 792, with 21 chapters written

And, to close, some MCM quotes:

I’m utterly wasted. I’m shaking and feel a bit ill, but I have a grin on my face the size of a planet.
Thank you to everyone for playing #3D1D with me for the last few days. It has been AMAZING. You are all superb.
And now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go and collapse into bed, and dream of things that aren’t keyboards.

Anna out.

Anyway! Chapter 40s up, and here be the notes:

Redux woken in back of van. Shocked to find it’s Rache waking him up.    How did they know? Wiretapping pol’s house, thought they could use this murder as leverage for stronger DSR support.    Rache is a DSR?    Yeah, she lied to him.    Apparently he lied back.    He tells story about what went wrong, and while she has no money, offers to help however she can. He suggests Venn’s morning mission. Not much time left. But he needs to make one last stop.

I’ll return for commentary in a bit, need to check on my noodles.

(Anna) 10.39am and wondering…
Am I the only one who finds Eli’s words of “need to check on my noodles” funny?

All I can say about this chapter is: YAY Yuri is not dead, YAY we were right about Chenne = Rache, and… err… that’s about it, actually.

There were several typos in this chapter, but I think that’s due to MCM’s hands moving faster than speeding bullets as he races through the chapters because there are only ELEVEN CHAPTERS LEFT! :O

(Jan) 10.52 am Finally back from oversleeping, roommate duties, school assignments and other totally unimportant stuff compared to the glory that is #3D1D.

I got to read 10 chapters in a row, which made for some great fun. I’m happy to report that when you read everything in a row it still works marvellously. I was a little worried MCM would kill of Yuri when I wasn’t watching life, but I’m glad he didn’t. Also, now that Rache turns out to be Chenne, which was my first guess when Rache first turned up, I don’t quite buy it. Because she’s talking about her bosses and stuff like that, and when in space it didn’t seem like she was among the ones in charge. I don’t know, just how she’s talking about it here, doesn’t seem quite right. So maybe Rache/Chenne is the mole.

At the other side, I’ve suggested in google talk that there might be no more actual mole, because the mole might have been Stacey. After all; if she had been Tundra and so highly recommended, how did the Italian Mob get involved? They might have blackmailed her when they found out… At another side, if Stacey was the mole, the organisation she was moling for would have saved her from the mob probably. Ahhh. Guesses Guesses. Anyone other ideas about the whole mole situation? Another thing, since Mr Anderson wanted to hire Kani as a mole, there must be another organisation, because why would an organistaion want 2 moles in the same team? Or maybe this proves that Stacey was the mole after all, and they know she’s in trouble because of that, and know so much about Kani’s situation, and thought, The mob replaced Stacey, why don’t we?

MAY 19, 2039 — BOLTON, CANADA
Kani escapes to a nearby shop, hides behind a dumpster. Kaso asks if she’s okay.    Helping because she’s cute, and he needs a girlfriend.    Joking.    Says you can’t be too careful these days, with all the rotten apples. Kani agrees, not really understanding.

Kaso asks her for her bank routing ID, so he can snag some cash for her to get through the next few day. She says she owes the mob money, so it’s probably empty.    He says not to worry about that, just give him the number. She says she doesn’t remember it offhand, has it written on a paper at home.

Kaso gets quiet. Asks what ELSE is at home. How about the secret coding chip? Does she have THAT? No, it’s… at home. Now she has to go home and get it. Very secure info on that. Gotta be done. But the cops are there! He says not to worry, they’re probably gone now.

She arrives, they’re not gone. Kaso says he’s make a distraction, and she can run in and get the chip.    A second later, the house’s phones ring.    Police officer answers. Kaso says: “We have your daughter.” and proceeds to go on a rambling story about kidnapping and Russian brides and the square root of 25. She’s on a ship out of town as we speak. Better get moving!

The cops start to race out, and Kani sneaks in. She gets to the top floor, into her room. Can she see it? Yes, she’s got it. But then there are footsteps! She hides, her father comes in, sits on her bed, upset. She hangs up.

Father is upset, falling apart. Gets out the phone, stares at it. She’s upset, watching him. He dials, listens, and then suddenly… RING.
Oh crap.

QUESTIONS
Something electronic. An object in the bedroom. An escape route from a house.

I’ll let Anne take over, with hopefully more coherent thoughts. (I shall now go back and reread the earlier chapters … may have missed something important …)

(ANNA) 9.47am and hoping the capital letters will teach Eli a lesson!
(That’s strike three by the way, Eli: you are no longer God in my head.)

On to the chapter itself: I liked the sentence “She smelled pineapples, wine.” Not sure why, but it was a striking image. And I continue to very much like Kaso as a character. His voice reminds me a lot of MCM by the way, not sure if I’m alone on this!

I’m curious to see how MCM is going to do the big reveal; by now Kaso was supposed to know who Kani actually is (if I’m not mistaken). Surely her lack of knowledge about certain things is giving her away? And how will they react when they find out?

And my questions are the same as Eli’s: what’s this secret important chip? Why did Kani pretend she had it? And the bank router id? And what is her father going to say? Questions, questions….

I assume Kani is just blagging on the encoder front, and may just give Kaso her own bank number if that’s possible? After all if she gets cash, she can pay off the mob and free Stacey, right? That’s assuming she’ll manage to escape from the clutches of her father!

Very much looking forward to the next chapter, and very smug that Jan is missing out on the fun (she’s gone to work and will be back in 6 hours).

So, yes. That is all. ANNA signing out.

p.s. Eli, I know it’s midnight your time and you’re tired. You’re forgiven now.

(Eli) 10:00 am: I’m sorry, ANNA M. HARTE! MCM update: he says it’ll all make sense later, and that they’re valid questions, and he included a with that message, so I suppose everything is quite alright.

So here’s a short recap, divided into story, writing, and community:

Story

The story so far looks to be quality MCM fare, i.e.: thriller, multiple plotlines that don’t seem in any way connected, action, good dialogue, lots and lots and lots of questions. This is also a first draft. Look carefully and you’ll notice all kinds of imperfections, things that Michael wants to go back and change, but can’t: there are typos, certain sentences that aren’t calibrated well and so tumble off your tongue instead of making pretty shapes in the air; in one case, a chapter that doesn’t quite make sense – but this is normal, and raw, and quite rare, really, given the way we’ve been trained to think about books.

Writing

I don’t know how to say this: but outlines do work. 3D1D makes me think twice about Stephen King’s model for novel writing. (Which is – imagine a scenario, write from that scenario, and then see where that takes you – a very risky approach, yes.

Community

Twitter has played a really big role in the project so far. I’m not very good at Twitter, so I suppose I should let one of the other two handle it. But if anything, 3d1d is thus far this: a writer doing what he does best, with a small crowd of his friends watching, cheering him on.

(Jan) 04.35 am at MCM’s let’s hope he’s still sleeping.

I think the Twitter part of it went great. Especially at the beginning, Twitter was buzzing with people participating in the questions, pose requests, and trying to earn referral points. The only problem I could see with it, is that twitter is still too America only, and therefore, not much of a participating crowd in the wee wee hours. The Twitter experience is also a big part of the fun. Waiting anxiously until MCM tweets that the next chapter is on, seeing which options got picked, reading other people’s suggestions… I’ve had to catch up twice already, and believe me, it isn’t quite as fun.

When I’m honest though, I fear a little for today. MCM will be tired, but the end won’t be in sight yet. The New!! factor of the event will be declining, but the conclusion of the event isn’t in sight yet. I really hope there will be enough support for MCM today. Don’t forget to tweet, blog and talk about #3D1D, and let’s all make sure he survives another day.

About the timezones, it seems The Dispatch is lacking some American Continent input, which means, we’re suffering from sleep deprivation, trying to stay awake. We’ll see how today will end up, but I’m almost as excited as yesterday, to admittedly a bit more tired

(Jan) 5.01 am. 1 hour until the start of day 2

Some more info on twitter. For those that feel like they are missing something, and for the future when Twitter deletes our posts, I have made a back-up of the event. This way, we can reread everything. At the moment there are 1047 tweets with the #3D1D hashtag. The first tweet was by me, linking to my #3D1D #Cquest video. Tweet 500 was a lovely pose suggestion. That I feel MCM is now obliged to do :p

mjgolli @1889ca #3D1D #cyq1 Another picture position: Standing on your head. Should get the blood flowing to the brain!

And tweet 666, which is an important number, was about mental conditions. A coincidence? I think not!

miladysa @1889ca #3D1D #c10q3 A psychological condition.- PTSD

Imagine now all replies to @1889ca, and people replying to each other, and we’re at far more than 1000 tweets. I really believe today we should make it to 2000 easily. So get on it!

(Anna) 5.13 am Day 1 is over. Day 2 is about to begin.
MCM wrote 16 chapters in one day. 16, I tell you. That would take me at least two weeks to write if I had nothing to do with my time and was able to concentrate fully on one task. (Which I can’t.)

It’s been a rewarding but tiring experience so far live blogging along with MCM, and I feel proud to have joined in on this venture. Eli and Jan have been fantastic, entertaining (and witty), and it’s been great to have an insider’s chat on how things are developing (despite several technical issues e.g. wordpress lag – don’t ask – which we may describe to you in great depth at a future date).

I fear today is going to be the toughest day so far. It’s that middle point I was telling you about; the excitement of the first day is over, the excitement of the last day yet to come.

Speaking of, we are starting in on the section which has less bought adspace. So if you want to get some advertising in for your website, do so now!

Overall, as both Eli and Jan have said, so far MCM is going strong, people on twitter have been absolutely great, and we do need some American input, so if you want to join in on live blogging, now is your chance!

@1889ca Rook in the graveyard.  I went all teary.  So now I’m cheering for Rook AND Yuri.

As am I! Bring it on, I say, I want to know if these two get their happy endings! (Risky bet, but I’ll hedge. *puts on grim face*)

So here are the notes for Chapter 16:

MAY 19, 2039 — PARIS, FRANCE
Knife-wielding thug about to pounce on Redux.    He is drunk, depressed, and ready to die.    Bar tender pulls out a weapon, tell them to beat it before he gets mad.

Redux invited to stay.    Been coming here a long time, but never this bad. What’s wrong? Anya getting worse? Too bad about the health care restrictions. Damn bureaucrats.

The economy’s in the pits.    Even the housing projects they were building in the old shipyards are being torn down, unsafe. Owned by Kenyans now. How’s work? Been better, Redux says.

Talk about how hard it is to find work anymore, how everyone’s gone to extremes.

Redux asks for a loan, but the bartender has nothing. In the red.    The money he lost when he kicked out the hooligans’ll probably be the end of him, but at least he went out on principle.

Bar tender suggests Redux go to the mob for money, but Redux explains he already has. Already deep in debt. Needs something to help Anya.    Bartender suggests he must have SOMEONE else… doesn’t he have any friends anywhere…?

I’ll be doing a first-day summary for 3D1D later; have to take a rest from all that rapid writing. I must say, it’s not as fun liveblogging without Janoda and Anna online! (Merrilee and I were the only two readers Twittering, so it’s likely that the entire Western hemisphere is dead asleep. Closing up shop for the day, Eli

MAY 19, 2039 — BOLTON, CANADA

Kani about to die, gun to head. Begs for life, but mob isn’t listening.    Mob’s phone rings.    Kaso again.    Belligerent and funny. Tells them he was instructed to let he die, and he always does what he’s told.    Kani gets ready to die, but then…

Kaso tells them to let “the girl” go.    They say not a chance, she owes big bucks.

Kaso asks how much money. They say $X. Kaso says if they don’t let her go, he’ll withdraw ten times that amount from their secret offshore bank accounts.

They think he’s bluffing. He says he’s not, he lives down the hall from Espey. They think THAT’S a bluff. He tries to convince them.

Kani sees a way out through a hole under the wall, but a big thug is in the way. She pretends to faint on him, and he catches her. Vertigo, she says. Shoulda taken the pills, girlie. Puts her back on the same chair.

Other phone rings. They take it out, hang up, toss it on the ground. Kani is freaking out.

Kaso is starting to list off the exploits he’d done, arguing with the mobster. Kani starts to slip her chair back towards the hold. Big thug is enjoying the boss’ verbal stylings. Kani makes run for it, ducks down and tries to push through, but BANG! Gunshot.

Kaso demands to know if they shot her.    They say no, she’s fine, but next one—

They get an email notifying them that $25,000 was withdrawn from their account.    Kaso says he has a twitchy trigger finger, executed when the shot went off.    Let her go, or it gets WORSE.

The thugs let her go reluctantly.    Kaso calls her phone, she syas thanks, but he says to hurry up and run, because it was a fake email, and they won’t be fooled long!

And here are the questions:

Offshore bank account location. Derogatory nickname. Random silly word.

The answers to those, in order: Seychelles by @IsaKft; perlite (those little white balls in potting soil) by @tenaciousN; Putz by @kdnewton. It should be pretty obvious where each of these answers pop up in the text, but I particularly loved how Michael worked perlite in a conversation. Very clever sneak, there.

(Note: picture not taken from MCM)

From the trusty old Internet resource, Wikipedia:

Newfoundland Screech is a particularly strong liquor, sold in Newfoundland and originally imported from Jamaica, which enjoys fame in many parts of Canada.

Cultural learnings for make benefit glorious nation of Web Fiction(!):

Screeching someone visiting Newfoundland for the first time is a longtime custom of many older bars in Newfoundland, in which the person is to drink a shot of screech, kiss a codfish on the mouth, and answer the question “Is ye an honourary Newfoundlander?” with the phrase “‘deed I is me old trout, and long may your big jib draw.” After completing these tasks, they receive an official ‘Screecher’ certificate.

I’m grinning like an idiot right now.

IMPORTANT UPDATE 10:43 pm: MCM’s struggling with chapter 15. He says “The biggest issue I’m having now is forgetting to read the last few lines of my chapter outlines, and missing out on key twists when I write the full version. So when I write the follow-up chapter, I’ve left out key information, and have to work extra hard to bridge the gap …”

Case in point: at the end of Chapter 14, Kani is supposed to tell Kaso that the real Tundra’s been abducted. But that didn’t happen, and now both Rook and Kaso have no idea what’s really going on with Kani, and most of the planned Chapter 15 isn’t making sense. MCM is currently struggling to make the two chapters meld.

He’s not allowed to edit Chapter 14.

More on this as we wait for Chapter 15 to be finished …

Minor update, 11:00 pm: Merrilee has figured out what a random poster in MCM’s blog, posted about a month back, really means! Brilliant catch:

If you still don’t get it: that’s the poster from Chapter 5, the one on board the train!

(Eli) It’s 5.43 am, 15 minutes before #3D1D begins. This will also be my last prelude post, before things begin in proper – I’m betting that MCM is awake and doing the various early-morning-routines every sane human being must do, upon waking up (i.e.: brush teeth, eat breakfast, prepare self for insane 72 hour writing experiment, you know, the usual …).

There’s nothing happening behind-the-scenes, however – Jan and I are online, conversing sporadically on gTalk, but MCM is nowhere to be seen.

Three things that you must know before 3D1D begins proper:

1. When I asked him what his biggest fear was, going into the experiment, Michael confessed that he was most afraid of site failure. If something – anything – goes wrong with the 3D1D website, Michael would have to stop writing to fix it – pretty much guaranteeing the fun in his funeral.
2. He’s already posted the questions for the first chapter on Twitter last night: they are – in order – name: 1) Strange things people wear. 2) Blood or no blood? 3) A security risk.
3. We told you before that he has notes prepared (a.k.a. The Outline), what we’re going to do here, on The Dispatch, is to post these notes on an hourly basis, right after he’s posted the latest chapters. You can then see how things are different between the outline and the end-chapter itself.

(Jan) It’s 6:23 am, and though he has officially started I have some prelude data left to share. I think it might be cool to have some kind of log of the various data MCM is showing on site.

1. Currently ads 1 to 10 are taken, as well as 14, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 51. This means not even all ads for day 1 are filled, so if you haven’t already there’s still lots of options free. I’m planning to do a people behind the ads update per day, so that’s an extra incentive to have a go at it.
2. MCM is also giving out referral points, and is keeping an automated list of top referrers. This is the current order: 1. tenaciousN, 2. Me, 3. merrileefaber, 4. quillsandzebras, 5. miladysa, 6. IsaKft, 7. nlcobb, 8. sdramsey, 9. eam. If you want to catch me, I currently have 161 points.

As a random fact, just before launching time, I actually screamed “HE’S AWAKE” out loud when MCM tweeted. I guess I’m ready to go :p

All of us who know him think he’s quite crazy.

My name is Eli James. I am not Michael C. Milligan, and I do not dare imagine the amount of work he has done in preparation for this event. Unlike Michael, I have not written fiction for about a year. (I have no idea why I just told you that). Here at The Dispatch, I will be liveblogging this experiment, taking time off only to attend to random real-life things. Michael himself will be posting short posts – mostly pictures, bless him – and will be tweeting throughout the 72 hours of this writing experiment. Some of us intend to make him do silly faces.

2. Why a novel in 72 hours is hard

Just so we’re clear on this: writing a novel is no mean feat. George Orwell worked on 1984 in frail health and in the bitter cold of winter, his publisher adamant that he complete the final draft of the novel before the end of the year, and so he did: with his typewriter in bed, thermostat turned on high, with cups of tea and coffee, sick in his lungs, and so died shortly after. Stephen King, the king of pop horror, describes writing fiction – and in particular long works of fiction – difficult and lonely to do: ‘like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub’. (He also believes in the healing properties of writing, but that’s another story for another day). David Foster Wallace, wunderkind of the 21st century litos-sphere, hung himself late last year in the middle of writing his third book. And on and on the list goes: writers who got drunk and smoked weed in the last years of their life, writing on tissue paper; writers who bemoan the act of writing the novel, writers who die tragically, writers who churn out 350 words a day, everyday, regardless of the circumstance, like a marathon runner focusing on only the next step in the sharp turn towards the inevitable.

Depressed now? Good. I’m just checking … but checking to make sure you understand the difficulties of writing a novel under even normal circumstances. Writing is lonely. It is tiring. It requires a level of mental concentration not unlike that of doing a series of sums in your head for an extended period of time, and even that is easier: sums need no creativity. MCM is taking this to an extreme, and he faces a very real threat of writing-fatigue in the long hours he will spend doing Typhoon.

He will also be having a hell lot of fun.

MCM writes thrillers. They’re fast-paced, quick, and rather violent-dirty things, and they keep the reader guessing right through the very end. It’s the one genre that lends itself readily to the idea of fly-by-night writing, especially one that will be done in front of a live audience. Michael will be tweeting questions at the end of each chapter (hashtag: #3D1D), enabling readers to change the story in ways that will both challenge and surprise even him, and he plans to take a picture of himself on a per hour basis, to allow us a glimpse of his eventual decline into insanity. (I’m kidding, of course) His wife and kids won’t be minding him. Which leads us to the question: if you’re writing a novel a chapter an hour, every hour for 72 consecutive hours, with very little breaks in between – how exactly do you do it?

3. How?

Here’s where things are interesting: Michael has, over the past few days or so, prepared an outline for the novel he’s going to write. He isn’t particularly worried about this aspect, at least: the last time I talked to him he seemed rather relaxed about the story, and was about to turn in for bed with a light migraine. We’re separated by 15 hours, and on my Mac dashboard I now have two clocks: one for Malaysian time, and another for Canadian. No guesses for which clock belongs to whom.

The idea for Typhoon’s story began in 2001, and was originally planned for use in a TV serial. Things didn’t work out, and the story sat out the good part of 8 years being reworked and retuned in a tool-shed in MCM’s head. He switched characters, added new storylines, and smoothed out the flow of events, over and over and over again. I asked him if he might break down, mid-way through the 72 hours, and begin doubting the direction of the story, and Michael didn’t even blink: “Doubt would be when I worry it’s all stupid and wish I hadn’t started.” He’s terrified of the experiment, but on the story he’s absolutely sure he cannot fail.

The one element in this project that has me worried is the degree of interactivity Michael’s building into Typhoon. The one question he asks every hour actually does affect the storyline in small but strange ways, things like ‘Should she take the train, or ride a bus?’ in an escape from the villain would matter for at least the next three chapters. MCM says that he’s compensated for these reader-generated variations in his plot outline, and that he’s prepared to ‘have fun’ with whatever his readers may throw his way. I wasn’t quite sure myself – to me, this was an unnecessary risk, like the tightrope artist who insists on walking without a safety line, or the tennis superstar who – out of deference to his father – plans on using a wooden racquet for the Wimbledon finals, after a tournament of playing with carbonite heads.

But Michael has done something like this in the past – once a week, every week, he writes a short story around whatever topic his readers throw his way. This is what’s known as a ‘topic tag’ over at his site, and he’s already done a few such stories. All of them are written on the fly, all of them are taken from his followers on Twitter, and all of them are rather long for such on-the-fly fiction.

The only other problem I can think up for such interaction would be possibility of contradiction: the kind of thing where you have a character saying she’s poor in the first chapter, and then driving off in a Ferrari in the tenth, and Michael’s got that worked out, too: “I know where the start and finish are, and I keep it in my head as I go. (And) really, when I wrote Rollbots, there were key points that needed to stay static, and others that could shift … I just learned to shift without losing the static stuff.”

And if reader-control led his characters to a place he never expected? “There are some things in this world that can’t be changed by individual actions.” he says, “some things are beyond the characters’ control, so I just let the world push them back on track.”

And a caveat:

“But hopefully I won’t need to.”

3D1D, or Typhoon, begins 6am Tuesday, UTC-7. Join us on The Dispatch as we follow MCM on this crazy-assed experiment, one chapter at a time.