The Office of Letters and Light Blog

An interview with Grant Faulkner, OLL’s new Executive Director!

On January 9, the OLL-iverse changed in a very important way. Our new Executive Director, Grant Faulkner, arrived at 3354 Adeline for his first day on the job. I sat down with Grant at his excellently appointed desk and we chatted about him, his life and loves, and what he’s most looking forward to now that he is OLL’s fearless leader. Here’s what he had to say.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I tend to drop a lot of things, but I’m really good at catching them. I drive my car with a mug of coffee in one hand and a thumb on the steering wheel while singing to songs on the radio. Sometimes I’m also eating a bagel and asking my kids if they did their homework. I bring numerous books, journals, and pens on plane flights and stack them on my tray as if I’m engaged in a serious research project, but then end up reading Vanity Fair.

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Marathon TV Watching

The other day, I added the entire six-season run of The Larry Sanders Show to my Netflix Instant queue. I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while, and I plan to take it down in one big gulp—a few solid days of rigorous sitcomming during the winter months.

Obviously, I’m not alone in this style of marathon TV watching. DVD and video-on-demand have made the practice a common part of the cultural conversation. I can’t jump on to my Facebook or Twitter feeds without hearing about someone working through a season or more. (A friend’s run of Cheers was the most impressive.) Recent episodes of Portlandia and Up All Night have noted the intense commitment people feel to the shows they’re mainlining. And many media critics have spoken up both for and against the “binge.”

(Our office, meanwhile, houses some serious Downton Abbey marathonners: Sarah and Grant just knocked out the first season.)

Are you a fan of watching TV shows all at once? Why or why not? If you are, which ones have kept you couch-bound? Any notable marathons that you regretted or repeated?

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user jayneandd

The Sacrificial Mitten

Sometimes, there are things in life that are just meant to happen, and much though you might try to change the course of destiny, you can’t.

I lost my mitten again. I’m pretty sure it’s gone for good this time. You see, I left it in a cab in New York City on my way from LaGuardia Airport to my hotel. And I’m okay with it being gone, for two reasons. First of all, that mitten obviously longed to be free, and I was oppressing it by forcing it to live in my pocket. It was obviously an adventure-seeking mitten, and I was lucky to get an extra two years of mitten-y love after it made a break for it a few years back.

And second of all, it became clear over the course of the week that the mitten was my sacrifice to the gods of New York City. And based on the rest of my trip, they deemed my sacrifice worthy.

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The Play’s the Thing

Until last week, it had been about a year since I went to “see a show”: a stage production of Beauty and the Beast.

I was reminded then, as I always am when I go to the theater, how much I love plays and how I really ought to see more of them. And more regularly.

And then another year passed before I found myself happily—luckily—invited to see Cirque du Soleil’s Immortal Michael Jackson tour. Not your traditional stage play by any stretch, but still theater to be sure.

The intersection of story (a loose bio of Jackson), tribute to his life and loves, and spectacular performance-art-as-music-video certainly ranked this production in the “like nothing I’ve ever seen” category. The astronomical production value, the astonishingly ornate costumes, the interpretations of history and the music that ranged from the wildly creative and abstract to the literal,  the pyrotechnics (!), the acrobatics, and the sheer awesomeness of the music heard in a different context all left me slack-jawed, starry eyed, and one million percent dazzled.

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Jane Sevier: A Perspective on Revision

Jane Sevier completed the first draft of Fortune’s Fool during NaNoWriMo 2008. After revision and publication, the novel was a finalist in the Romance Writers Association’s Golden Heart Awards. In this article (originally published on the Moody Muses blog), Jane discusses her post-NaNo process and how she built the book from the bones up. What lessons have you learned from your own revisions?

You made it through NaNoWriMo with your 50K or however many words. Then the holidays came along to distract you and let you recover a little while those words lay fallow for six weeks.

So, now what? If you’re like me, you’re itching to look back at what poured out of you in November. Or what you extracted with forceps and one foot braced against the desk. However those words arrived on the page, enough time has passed to give you a fresh perspective.

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It’s the simple things in life.

Last February, I posted a story about my nerd-out over the arrival of my new seed catalog. I love to garden and I was deciding on what to plant for the season. Right before Script Frenzy kicked off in April, I managed to plant an assortment of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. I wasn’t sure what was going to take, but I hoped for the best.

By July, my garden was bursting with three types of squash, plenty of herbs, cucumbers, strawberries, jalapeños, bell peppers, and sunflowers. It was wonderful, and my friend snapped a photo to share with you. Ah, it really is the simple things in life that make me happiest.

What’s been making you happy lately?

– Sandra

Down the Rabbit Hole

NaNoWriMo’s been over for a bit now, but I’m only just beginning to feel the slump. After a month of spending hours with my characters, researching the perils of deep-cave exploration and the mechanics of spelunking, and not-so-patiently explaining why I wouldn’t be making that baseball game with friends after all, the relative quiet of January is, well, a little disquieting. I’m a little sad to be honest!

Still, one thing that’s bucking me up? Knowing that Script Frenzy is only a few short months away. NaNo came first for me, and is near and dear to my heart, but Script Frenzy might be a footstep nearer and dearer. I was a literature-writing major at UC San Diego, and chose a focus in screenwriting for my last year there.

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The Office of Mittens and Brrr

Here in the Bay Area, we’re having a quite beautiful, quite temperate winter.

But in the OLL office, we cannot get out of an ongoing cold wave. Try as we might, even with the heater pumping, we’re just not feeling the warmth. I blame our high ceilings and big windows—nice the rest of the year, but they provide insufficient structure for maximum toastiness. At least one of us has even taken to wearing a Snuggie at the coldest points in the day. (It’s a leftover merchandise sample… Did we ever tell you that we thought about making NaNoWriMo Snuggies?)

Many of you live in colder parts of the world, and we thought you might be able to help. How do you stay warm while working—whether on your writing or at your day job? Better yet, give us your most ridiculous idea to stave off the cold, and we’ll take a picture of a staff member wearing or doing it.

Thanks in advasbnm,ce (Whoops, mitten-related typo.)

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user Syniq

Writer Fuel: Mexican Hot Chocolate

Need help tackling that rewrite? This tasty drink will give you the boost you need to help you get started. The following recipe makes about two over-sized mugs of hot chocolatey delight.

Ingredients:

• One tablet of Mexican chocolate (Abuelita, Morelia or Carlos V) broken into smaller pieces. 
• 3 cups of milk (skim, 1%, 2%, or whole milk all work)
• ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)
• A pinch of salt (optional)
• Mini marshmallows (optional)
• Brown sugar (optional)
• Cinnamon sticks
• Whipped cream

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Calling all YA and Middle Grade Novelists!

We just caught wind of a tremendous opportunity for Wrimos who have written a young adult or middle grade novel. And it supports a wonderful humanitarian cause that also champions our shared passion for literacy and libraries!

Thanks to a contest hosted by literacy charity Book Wish Foundation, you could get feedback on your writing from literary agents and renowned authors like Ann M. Martin, winner of the Newbery Honor for A Corner of the Universe, and Cynthia Voigt, winner of the Newbery Medal for Dicey’s Song and the Newbery Honor for A Solitary Blue.

(We’re excited to see past NaNo and YWP pep talkers Meg Cabot and John Green are involved in this project, too!)

From Book Wish Foundation:

Visit http://bookwish.org/contest for full contest details. To enter, write a 500-word essay about a short story in Book Wish Foundation’s new young adult anthology, What You Wish For. Write the best essay about Meg Cabot’s story, and you’ll win a manuscript critique from one of the top YA literary agents. Write about Ann M. Martin’s story and the author of the mega-bestselling The Baby-sitters Club and the Newbery Honor-winning A Corner of the Universe could provide feedback on your NaNoWriMo novel.

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Thanks for Your Readership

Some time during our office’s holiday nap, this blog quietly reached 10,000 Tumblr followers. A pretty sweet milestone.

Today I reread the staff “Blog Manifesto” that started it all, and this phrase jumped out:

We want to show people who we are and what we care about.

I think we’re accomplishing that—through posts both silly and serious, on topics from the height of NaNoWriMo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and everywhere in between. And even more importantly, we’re learning a lot about our readers through the great discussions that happen in the comments section.

But, we can always do a little bit better. We’d love to hear from you: What’s your favorite part of reading the OLL blog? What features do you want more of? Any new ideas or questions?

Thanks for your readership, and thanks in advance for your thoughts. We appreciate you making OLL a part of your day.

– Chris A.

Photo by Flickr user mollybob

Mark Your Calendars! ABNA is Coming!

On our 2011 edition of the “I Wrote a Novel, Now What?” page, we list a number of free contests and writing challenges that you can enter this year. One of them is the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which is fast approaching!

Wrimos are no strangers to the ABNA; scores have entered, many have reached the semi-finals and finals, and last year a Wrimo won!

That’s right.

In 2011, Jill Baguchinsky was the winner in the young adult fiction category for her novel, Spookygirl, which she drafted during NaNoWriMo!

This from Amazon:

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award brings together talented writers, reviewers, and publishing experts to find and develop new voices in fiction. The 2012 international contest will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Open submissions for manuscripts will begin on January 23, 2012 and run through February 5, 2012. If you’re an author with an unpublished or previously self-published novel waiting to be discovered, visit CreateSpace to sign up for regular contest updates. See the official contest rules, or read details on how to enter.

If you plan to enter, share the details about your novel here! We’d love to hear all about your masterpiece manuscripts.

Good luck, novelists! We’re rooting for you!

– Lindsey