As I told you last week, I spent the Labor Day weekend locked in a large bookstore with eleven other writers, under the watchful eyes of cameramen and television production people. Those who think my grasp of reality is tenuous at best, think it is rather odd that I would end up on a reality-TV series.

Most reality shows, seem to thrive on conflict. Some of the crew obviously hoped that we might be at each other's throats within a few minutes of the start of filming. Unfortunately for them, when you put a dozen writers into a room and give them a 72- hour deadline to finish a complete novel, you are going to find that their major conflict is with the clock, not each other.

We were provided with sleeping accommodations, which consisted of bunk beds in a room at the back of the store. I knew, from watching last season's show that room was not off limits to the camera crew.

Last year, a female contestant was shown, sleeping in her bunk, doing a pretty good impersonation of a gas-powered leaf blower. Because my wife has indicated in the past that I also snore, I resolved to do whatever was necessary to not be the star of this year's snore footage. I brought a supply of those strips that keep your nasal passages open. As extra insurance, I decided to stay out of the beds as much as possible.

On the first night I slept for two hours. I got three hours on the second. On the third and final night, I and three others didn't even go to bed.

It wasn't really anything new for me. Each year, over the President's Day long weekend in February, I teach at the Southern California Writer's Conference in San Diego. Sleep is not a priority there, which is part of the reason why I say that event is too much fun to be legal in certain parts of North America.

By mid-morning on the final day, somewhere around the fifty-eighth hour, I had my story basically completed. Thankfully, they weren't expecting us to complete anything more than a good first draft. It will still take a fair bit of polishing and expansion to bring it to the point where I would submit it for publication.

At this point, all I can tell you is that it is a mystery with a fair bit of comedy thrown in for good measure. You will have to wait for the TV series to get more details.

Of course, I would never get involved in something like this without expecting some sort of situation to arise that could only happen to me. Things seemed to be going along pretty smoothly through to the morning of Labor Day Monday. Obviously something had to give.

Because I hadn't gone to bed the night before, I went to the washroom to get cleaned up before the eight cast members who had slept managed to get up. Naturally, the camera crew followed me, but I managed to get everything but brushing my teeth done before they burst in on me. Television is not ready for full-frontal Kirkland.

When everyone else left the sleeping room, I slipped in, hoping to change quickly, without going through the contortions of trying to change under the covers. If I heard the door start to open I could yell out that whoever it was really didn't want to come in at that point.

Sleep deprivation makes you forget certain details, things like the fact that the window, which I was certain just looked out on the loading bay for the bookstore, didn't have curtains. Halfway through the changing process - in other words, all the way through the undressing process - I glanced at the window. It did face the loading bay, but on just the other side of that, there was the very full drivethrough lane for a donut shop. A woman, who appeared to be well into her seventies, was staring back at me with her jaw dropped as far as it would go.

She probably still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night with that image racing through her subconscious. Now, you probably will, too.

©2007, Gordon Kirkland