TC McCracken:
Thank you for this opportunity but I already know, I AM WELCOME. Everyone is. My magic stick conjures up these words to describe my Decameron experience and my Cirdo de Nada experiences: Intriguing, Exhausting, Captivating, and Akin to the Wildest of Imaginations.
And perhaps, a bit humiliating to have raw, lightly edited experimentations of my writing published in a world that has limited toilet paper to clean up my shit. I could go back to edit my work; to wash my hands of it but that would mean — it’s over. To the readers that I made myself vulnerable to with my left out words, mixed tenses and misused punctuation — YOU”RE WELCOME: TC
Amy Driesler:
Writing daily stories for Decameron was a great focus for my first ten days of shelter at home. It was fun to read what everyone else was writing as well.
David Leicht:
When Nick first invited me to do the Decameron, I was in the middle a very stressful week at the hospital where I work, with the general anxiety and fear among patients and staff ramping up exponentially. The idea of adding something else to my plate seemed overwhelming. I loved the idea, but how could I possibly do this now!? But... I’m so glad that I took the risk and made the effort. I realized early on that the only way to get through this was to fully embrace the difficult circumstances under which the writings were made and let them be part of the work. If I was too exhausted to stay up late to finish a piece and fell asleep while writing, I would just work that in to the piece. it was meant to be. I was not fully in control, and that was ok. I wanted to be honest. I could sense this from the other writers as well, and seeing them come through on a daily basis with such variety and passion really inspired me to keep going when I wasn’t sure I could. I am so grateful to all of the writers involved in this project for giving me strength. You all inspire me so much. Thank you!
Jessie Hanson:
I've never sat myself down with the intention of writing fiction before this experience. It's been an adventure. Deadlines! Curse you, Nick Trotter! It's also been really fun to start off just typing a few words and seeing where they lead. A brief, passionate, affair with writing in the midst of a pandemic — lovers in a dangerous time, indeed.
Nick Trotter:
I’ve been seeing over and over, on the internet, memes that say “you don’t have to use this quarantine to write a novel. Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself” or some such. That’s fair. We don’t have to guilt each other into a “carpe diem” mentality. And I’ll admit, I have a little (OK, OK, a lot) of that kind of overachiever in me. A lot.
But when the crisis really hit, all of my shows got cancelled: improv gigs, a re-mounting of Idiopathic, a trip to the Alaska State Improv Festival. As a freelancer, I’m pretty used to mostly staying at home. But my creative work, especially improv, is my social scene, and I was desperate to both create something, and to play and connect with people.
I have been getting more and more intrigued by fiction. My best entertainment the last couple of years has been the novels and short stories of Raymond Chandler; And I got a huge writer-crush on Jennifer Egan this winter, reading The Keep and A Visit From the Goon Squad.
So. The result was obvious. I invited a bunch of people who are either active members of the Circo de Nada improv teams, or involved in productions like Henry Four, or whom I’ve partnered with in the past… or whom I just thought would be a good fit for the project. All of them had to be writers on some level, and I had to get a total of ten.
So: Amy. TC. Shelsea. Brice. Kat. David. Leila. Sal. Jessie. These were the ones in the greater Circo de Nada constellation who accepted the challenge.
None of us, it turns out, were really fiction writers. But we are now…
Unlike Bocaccio’s fictional storytellers, not everyone in the group knows each other; Amy is on the West Coast, David and Leila are on the East. The rest of us are in Denver, but don’t necessarily know each other very well. The requirement was 250 words per day. The dare was to try to influence and play with each other.
It didn’t have to be “good.”
It could be fluff. It could be a stream-of-consciousness improvisation. It just had to be fiction: to be a story that could transport people to another world.
Because the whole point of a quarantine is escape.
I’m tremendously proud of the writing we’ve done, the play we’ve engaged in. Everyone on this project challenged themselves in imaginative ways; played with the meaning of the word “story”, broke with form, and surprised themselves in the way that good improvisers do. I think it’s been a powerful and enriching experience for all of us, whether we go on to write a bunch more fiction or not. And I think it’s been an enjoyable escape for our audience too.
Please follow these writers on social media. Please make new digital friends. And please stay healthy! You’re welcome…