(Eli) Forgot the timestamp but it was before Jan’s comment and after 4 am. It’s always strange when you’re at the tail end of a long day, looking back at the past 16 hours of crazy writing. It’s been two days for me, Jan and Anna (plus mjgolli, but I’m not sure about that) one day for MCM, and we’ve all been through weird sleep cycles. Funny how the world is divided into time zones when you’re online.

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!