Well! I never expected such a response. Thanks! People found different things to like in different stories, and some seemed to crystallize both people’s love of the festival and their contempt for it, at the same time. Which is cool, because it’s a complicated beast to understand.

Anyway, here’s the point: a few people have asked me to write more, but they’re not mine to write. Many people were there, with many viewpoints. And many of us weren’t there and have equally valid takes on the subject. 

So here’s what I want you to do: the Twelfth Story is yours. Yes, you. You get the gist of what I’ve been doing below but really, let’s throw it open. Any kind of short piece, a description, dialogue, whatever helps put across a sense of how you saw it, let’s have it. At the top of the page is a link called Your Twelfth Story. Click that, write your story, and let’s see if we can make a time capsule of SXSW - as fiction.

(We’ll leave it open across the weekend, and the winner - if such a thing exists - will get something nice from me)

Happy writing!