He who laughs last

Hey, it's that story I totally post every two months without fail. That one.

It's much darker than anything I've published on here before, but darkness is actually my usual output.

Back in Town

Jokers

After coming up with essentially 3 story seeds, I decided it was within my ability to actually finish this one. It's goofy fun, for everyone (everyone over the age of 17).

I give you, "Jokers."

Why no story?

I didn't write a story this time. It's clearly getting harder for all of us to stay on top of our self-imposed deadlines. I think this is due to two reasons.

First, the novelty of the project has worn off. We're over halfway through, and we're trudging towards the end. It's no longer a fresh new idea, but an old one that we may be a bit tired of by now. It didn't make writing a habit for us, unfortunately; it remained a chore.

That brings me to my second point- we're not writers. By that, I mean we don't write on a regular basis. As much as I've wanted to, and as much as I've tried, I've never written on a set schedule. "Writer" is a profession- it's what they do. Plumbers fix pipes almost every day. Singers sing almost every day. And writers write almost every day. That doesn't mean that writing should be easy for the writer, even though words seem to flow like lava from an erupting volcano from the pens of such folks as Stephen King and the late Isaac Asimov. No, writing is a job, and like all jobs it's sometimes pleasant and sometimes unpleasant. If you only write when it's pleasant for you, then it's nothing more than a lark, not a job, and you'd be better off writing a diary than stories for other eyes. To be a writer you have to write, day or night, rain or shine, fun or not. And that's what I've not been doing. So I don't know about my fellow participants in this project, but I'm going to try to change my approach, go at this thing with renewed vigor, and finish strong.

But yeah, I missed this one.

Fail

A thousand apologies.

Okay, so it's back to normal for me: I missed a deadline. I'd tell you I had a good reason (because I did), but there's no excuse.

I give you what I have. It isn't finished; I might finish during our free week. I may not. I don't like my story very much.

Do with it what you will.

"Out into the Cool of the Evening."

Better luck to the lot of us next time, huh?

Birds of a feather

In under the wire! I rushed this, but I'm going to revise during the one-week grace period. I promise. As I wrote it, I became more and more convinced that my first impulse to write it as a one-act play was the correct one, but I'm afraid we're stuck for now with the short story version. I'm not a playwright anyway, which is the reason I quashed that impusle. But I don't think it works as a story. It's not my best work, but enjoy anyway.

Background Noise (short story)

EDITS:
7/7/08- Minor stylistic changes and errors fixed. As a bonus feature, I reformatted it as a one-act play to see if that works better. The play version is linked below, the copyedited short story version remains linked above. Yes, both versions probably ought to be longer, more substantial. But I didn't get to that in a week, and now it's time to move on the the next saying... for which I do not have an idea yet.

Background Noise (play)

Birds of a Feather.

To put it simply: I failed.

Well ... goddamn.

Here.

Brandon's Interjection

My attempt to interject myself into your contest.