I've been giving more thought to Assay and Assail: Clandestine Dealings of the U.S. Census Bureau, but I still can't remember the ending. I know the main character is going to die, but I can't remember how I was going to do it. I just know that it caused the rest of the story to unravel for me, hence my current frustration. I did have a new thought. I was brainstorming, hoping thinking on the various possibilities might remind me of what I had original created. That didn't happen. What I did come up with, is a twist I enjoy. It's been done before, but most things have. Start with a prologue that shows a USCB assassination. No names, just lots of description and a murder. The last scene of the book is the exact same, but now with context so all the description resonates differently.

I was also musing on the fact that I might write a play again and I remembered a performance I saw in South Dakota when my last play was produced. The actors themselves admitted it was the best performance they had ever given, and they had thrown in some new tweaks that really played to the crowd. It was a ghost story that went over so well, the person who played the ghost was actually allowed to take a bow. They said that had never happened before. She got a standing ovation. There is a technique in the theatre that you may or may have not witnessed or heard about. There is a screen that hangs across the stage. It has a specific mesh pattern. Depending on how the light hits the screen, it might shine right through, it might make things look kind of hazy (like you're looking through a thin mosquito net) or it might become totally solid. This is how they simulated the ghost effect without taking the actor off-stage. Simply change the angle of the light, and the person behind the screen disappears. This lends itself very well to my short story, Protocol J-25. The story itself is just a lot of talk talk talk. But on a stage, that's all it ever is. Put a screen over the actor's face. Change the light at the end and it all goes blank or even disappears, lending itself to the big reveal. This has a lot of potential.

So staying up late and getting up early is starting to have a detrimental effect on me. I sleep in tomorrow! I had a bunch of stuff I needed to do when I got in (including looking something up on Wikipedia that I no longer remember), but instead, I seem to be slowly moving along like a zombie. This is not good. Lot of stuff to do today (including an online presentation delivered to my boss's boss).

Continuing with the steady stream of ideas this week (most of which haven't been related to the story I actually need to finish), there is a skeleton of a story that's been rattling around in my brain for a few years now. I've never put it down seriously before because I could never envision a story beyond the general concept and I couldn't think of a title. I can't write if I don't have a title (the title may change--it usually doesn't--but I have to have one). Today, not only did I think of a title, but I thought of an ending, which gives me more than just a concept. Now I have the making of a story. Strangely, it's too big to be a short story, but too short (at the moment) to be a novel. I think I may use this as my first endeavor into the novella arena.

So, following the conclusion of other projects I've recently discussed in this journal, I will begin work on Assay and Assail: Clandestine Dealings of the U.S. Census Bureau. I hope it is as fun as it sounds.