The Archivists

In March of 2011, the illustrious and fantastic Jan Oda arranged for me to fly to Belgium to participate in "The Game is Up!" — an arts festival at Vooruit, in Ghent. Participate how? Well, I'd be writing a novel, live on the internet, with input from the audience, in three days. So typical livewriting, right? Except this time, I'd be sitting in a cafe in full view of actual human beings. Eek!

It was insane. I was hand-patching software to make the system work, right until the last second. Custom-made services were set up so my keystrokes would register immediately, playing on screens above me, and all across the internet; but then separate systems would allow people to make suggestions and leave comments; and still others were set up for me to actually write the story without losing my mind. And it mostly worked!

The story is being converted into a series right now (see the Books section for details) but the first round was wild, it was fun, and it had twists that made people throw stuff at me. Livewriting is never boring, but *this* livewriting was the best thing I've ever done. Best insomnia ever.