I love writing stories in IRC. Except for the part where once a line is out in the wild, I can't go back and change it. Thus, the story is continually built on what came before. I realize this seems to be an obvious statement, but the nature of IRC is that I can't go and edit it if after it's live I think of a better way to say something, or a better direction to go in.

That's what happened in this story. I got to the end, and then I saw a better way to end it, but I was already stuck with what I had.

And the subject is pickles, at Shep's request. Well, he requested a story, and made him give me a starting point. Pickles it was.

Oh, and I've been informed that I haven't mentioned where this is all going down. Freenode's Servers in the #9rules room. I'm usually in mutliple rooms at once, but #9rules is my homebase (oli oli oxen free).

Shep needs a lot of entertaining in IRC, so I wrote him another story, starring him, of course. It's hard to come up with characters on the spot, so I generally use who's around.

Apparently I'm in a very Jedi mood. And of course, trying to be funny. At least Shep laughed.

Oh, and forgive the no caps. I just don't do that in IRC.

Yay! go me!. Shep found the chat logs from yesterday, and so I can give you the first lame story from 9rules IRC.

Re reading it now, it's atrocious. But that's what you get when you're told to write a story right then, damn it. And I couldn't think of anything. My mind was terribly blank.

I get bored in irc when the room is so terribly dead. So, I thought I'd write a story :) This one is inspired by the whales in the Port of Sacramento right now, because I needed something to start with.
At least with this sort of writing, I should be writing more often.

And now if only I had logs of yesterday's story about shep. Because it was funny... But, this one is.. odd, to say the least.

Oh, and forgive the lack of caps. I don't usually use caps in IRC, and I copied this directly over.

Somebody told Troy I was writing a romance novel with him as the lead. And by someone, I mean mekkity.

She's freakin' evil, I tell you. It doesn't help that she's doing a profile on him for journalisim, and wanted to interview me. And then asked questions where the answers would envariably lead back to "because he's so depressing." I'd really like to pass this class, you know. And Troy asked to review the article before it gets turned in, so I had to be on my best behaviour.

Troy is understandibly spooked about the whole thing. According to the Guy Who Sits In Front Of Me, he even brought it up in the evening SciFi class, stressing about what it could possibly be about.

Looks like someone's getting an ARC if the Romance ever gets finishe. But not mekkity. She can buy it at full price, plus an emotional damage fee. I didn't need 30+ people I don't know talking about the Romance.

Besides, it was supposed to be an (open) secret, for only our class to know. If this article goes to press, it'll be more like the entire paper-reading population of the school. So tack on like ten more people.

I've been working on the same scene in the romance for weeks now. Seriously. The problem is that Troy has just up and changed on me, very uncertain, which makes it harder to do the scene. They're in a dog park, and Lily obviously has a dog, but Troy hasn't even noticed yet. Because he doesn't know what's going on, so I don't either.

Very frustrating.

So, instead, I started working on a plot bunny that wouldn't let go. I don't know if it's a short story or a novel yet. I thought it was going to be a quick and dirty short story, but there was no confrontation in the scene that I have, so obviously it's part of a bigger whole. But I don't know how whole that is.

But it makes me laugh. And it does what apparently all of my stories do these days--reference and make fun of other stories. I promised mekkity  that I'd post what I had as of this afternoon. I showed it to her as the paragraphs started coming, and it made her laugh, so that's always a good sign.

However, I'm not going to post this like the Romance. Text file if you want to see it, but I'm not going to keep myself from going back and editing it, so I'll just update the txt file from time to time if someone wants to see the update. It's rough, obviously. And I'm writing with no clear direction. I'm already irritated that the female lead wants to be a fashion designer. Who apparently loves to read. And yet, I have no idea what she looks like.

Oh, and funny: today, Inspiration Troy was talking about the Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock (Eliot), and how everyone wants to have someone, because it's no fun going to the night club alone. And I started laughing. mekkity  and the guy in front of me were both like, "what's so funny?"

"Troy. In a nightclub."

It's just a funny thought. Funnier, because I've already written that scene. He doesn't have to worry about being lonely in a night club when I'm around.

I realize that the Romance is on shaky legs.

Seriously. Like a poet would have groupies like that, even if is name is Nate Hawthorne. I just didn't know how else he would have groupies in a college-town envirornment. Although, I could just make him popular, and that they aren't really groupies.

And I know Troy is very difficult. He keeps trying to pigenhole Lily, but she just won't fit neatly into one catagory for him.  I also haven't figured out why he believes Lily should already know who he is.

It's hard writing by the seat of your pants, with only a sketchy plotline at best. I've discussed most of this story and where I want it to go with ME; unfortunately it was months ago at this point, and I never bothered to write anything down.

I could use some help before Monday though... I'm very bad at naming characters (go ahead, guess why Nate got the last name he did), and so I need last names for both Troy and Lily. I also need a place for them to run into on Monday.

If you've got ideas, tell me please. The semester will be long indeed if I'm having problems this early in the game, I know.

 Troy wandered the isles of the bookstore, unable to keep his mind off of the memory of the club last weekend. As soon as the song ended, Lily had extracted herself from his arms like a precision surgen, escaping from the crowd before he had managed to call out more than her name. He hadn't expected her to actually wander off like that, even though she had told him exactly what was going to happen.

However, she was exactly right in that he had spend time wondering about her, who she was. With only a first name to go on, he couldn't google her without more information, and they had spent their time talking about his friendship with Nate than about her.

He rounded the corner from mythology to poetry, and there kneeled on the ground before him was Lily, her face in profile. She didn't see him right away, and he took his time looking at her, noticing things that had been hidden in the darkness of the club. Her hair had been pulled back into a low braid hanging midway down her back, her narrow neck exposed as if a sacrafice.   A plain grey t-shirt didn't quite cover the exposed skin of her lower back; jeans rode low and he supposed they probably hung off her hips when she stood.

He was not surprised she was in the poetry section. After their discussion of Nate, he was sure she was searching out the volume of ubiquitis love poems that could be seen in the arms of  co-eds around town. He was surprised, however, when she stood up with a copy of Virgil's Aenid in her arms.

She turned, smiling when she saw him standing in the isle. "Hello, Prince Charming."

"Hi...um...Cinderella." Troy said.

The smile on Lily's face grew, until it was big enough for a laugh to escape. Troy imagine it was what champagne bubbling over a flute would sound, and it set him to laughing as well.

Looking pointedly at the book, "I don't picture you a Virgil fan," he said.

She began to walk down the isle away from him, and Troy fell into step beside her. "I don't think I am, but I like the work of the translator, and thought I'd give Virgil as fair a shake as I did Homer."

"The translator?"

"Bernard Knox. You should read his translation of the Oddysey, best I've ever read."  Lily had stopped in front of the  science fiction books.

"Do you have any suggestions?"

"Suggestions?" Troy hadn't noticed where they were, and didn't follow her line of thought.

"For a book? I need some kind of light reading to break up the seriousness of Virgil." Lily punched his arm lightly, to draw his attention to the bookshelves.

Troy surveyed the books before him, surprised they were in the science fiction section instead of something more essentially female, such as romance or memoirs. He managed to hold in his surprise, and pulled a smaller book from the shelf.

"Ender's Game? Give me a little credit, I read that when I was in the sixth grade," she said. She pointed to a large series taking up a lower shelf. "Have you read any of those? I'm leary to begin a series that isn't finished yet, even if there are so many books."

Looking over the books, Troy smiled. "Terry Goodkind is amazing. First Wizard is a great series, although I don't think it falls under light reading."

She bent over, braid falling over her shoulder, as she pulled the book off the shelf. "Anything that isn't a classic is light reading for me." Standing back up, she smiled at him. "Thanks for the recomendation."

"Any time." Troy stood there for a moment, letting the silence build uncomfortably between them before he began again. "Would you like to get coffee?"

"I would love coffee, but I don't drink it." She turned to him. "I've got to get going, but it was nice running into you."

"You too." Troy said, and she walked away without a backwards glance.

He wondered for a moment if she really was glad to have run into him. He thought perhaps not, that she was self-concious about being there to pick up Nate's book, and only used the Aenid as a distraction.

But what an interesting distraction it is, he thought to himself. To read something because of the translator, and not because of merit or assignment was a novel approach, and he found himself in front of the poetry section, picking up a copy of the Aenid for himself, before he relized what he was doing.

Shrugging his shoulders in a conversation to himself, he ambled toward the registers with his newest aquistion, forgeting entirely to pick up the copy of The New Yorker that had brought him to the bookstore.

Troy watched her from the corner of his eye. In a pair of jeans and a tank top, she was covering more skin than the majority of the girls in the club. Straight dark hair the color of mud fell across her shoulders, and she absently pushed it behind her as she took a deep draught from her glass. He waited for her to talk to him, as all the girls always did.

Minutes passed, and she didn't turn toward him. He was flummoxed, unable to understand how there could be a woman in the room who didn't know who he was--who didn't want to talk to him. The woman finished her beer, placing the glass back on the bar before turning to watch the room.

Troy finished his own bear, and flagged the bartender over. "Two more," he called out, holding up his glass in one hand, and two finger on the other, to be sure the bartender understood, whether or not he had heard him.

As the bartender brought the two beers over, Troy tapped the woman on the shoulder. "Can I buy you a beer?"

She turned and saw the bartender before them, and laughed--a bubbly sound that Troy was glad he could have brought out of her. "Of course, thank you." She smiled at him.

They drank companionably for a bit, before the comparative silence forced Troy to speak. "I'm Troy," he said, introducing himself.

"Hello Troy. I'm Lily," she said. "I'd ask if you come here often, but that'd be awful trite, wouldn't it?"

He laughed, and replied. "Yes, it is trite, and yes, I do come often. Should I return the question? Do you come often?"

Lily smiled, taking a sip from her drink. "No, first time here. I just moved up here last week. I don't go to bars very often."

"No?"

"No."

A silence lapsed between them, and Troy felt that he had somehow been shortchanged in the interogation. He tried to come up with a new direction for conversation, when she interupted his thoughts.

"Since you come here often," she said, "who's that guy over there?"

"Which guy?"

"That one," she pointed out to the center of the dance floor at Nathan, still surrounded by the fawining girls who had mobbed him on his arrival.

Troy marveled at her ability to turn the conversation to Nathan without seeming like she was asking about him. It was a novel approach, one that allowed him the ablility to humor her in her quest to get closer to Nathan.

"That's Nathan Hawthorne," he said.

"Really? Like, a decendent of Nathanial Hawthorne, author of the Scarlet Letter? Girls surround him because of that?" she asked.

Troy laughed. "No, the name is a coincidence. His mom was really into Hawthorne, and when she married a man of the same of the name, she couldn't help but name Nate that."

"You sound like you're friends with him. Why aren't you out there with him?" she said, before turning back to the bar, and waving down another drink, a soda this time.

Troy turned back to the bar as well. "We always get separated. He can't go anywhere without his groupies these days." The bitterness seeped into his voice, and he waved down another beer.

"And what has your Mr. Hawthorne done to warrent said groupies?" Lily said, turning to face Troy.

He kept his gaze focused on the reflection of Nate in the mirror over the bar. "He's just published his latest book of love poems."

"And that deserves groupies?"

"This is a college town. Those girls want to be the subject of his next poem. It'll wear off when the semester starts." Troy said before taking a swig of his drink.

"Hmm," she said, before smiling at him. "Do you want to dance?"

"Excuse me?" Troy said.

"Finish your drink, and lets dance. I have to leave soon, and I'd like a Cinderella moment, if you please."

"A what kind of moment?" Troy asked.

"Cinderella. You know... We'll go out and dance, and when it's over, I'll leave quickly, and you'll go on wondering who I am until the next time we run into one another." She smiled at him, and he didn't know how he could possibly say no.

"Alright." He gulped down the last of his beer, and lead her out onto the dance floor.

    Troy stood at the bar, beer fuzzing away in his hand. His back to the bartender, he scanned the room. It was packed like a tin of sardines; bodies pulsed in time to the beat.

    Across the room, he watched a giggling group of girls--college students most likely--clump around Nathan. Troy and he had come together, but as happened most nights, they had become separated as the crowd had gathered. Troy had abandoned Nathan and the fawning hangers-on for his solitary beer at the bar.

    A woman swam into view, emerging from the writhing school of bodies as the crowd unconsciously parted to let her through. She headed toward him, and Troy turned away, ready to ignore whatever overture she made toward him.

    "Beer. Whatever he's having," she called out to the bartender.