December 2010
19 posts
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OLL's Holiday Adventures
We are closing the office for the holidays and taking a much-needed winter nap. In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of a walrus snacking on a festive ice-cake at the New York Aquarium.
Don’t worry, we’ll be back in blogging action in the new year! And, here’s what we’ll be up to during the end of December:
Chris B.
For the holidays, I’ll be going to...
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Only a hippopotamus will do
I have an inexplicable fondness for hippos. It’s not quite on the level of Tavia and her owls, but I do have a small collection of hippopotamuses. A particular highlight of my life was visiting Zimbabwe and seeing actual hippos in the wild. I once got into an extended postcard-based debate with my grandmother about what kind of sound a hippopotamus makes.
So despite my general disdain...
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Books as Visual Art
Flavorpill has collected a bunch of stunning pieces of book artwork. These are a few of my favorites. See even more at Flavorwire.
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The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
If you wrote a novel last month, first of all congratulations! Second of all, you may want to consider entering your novel to win the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. One grand-prize winner for general fiction and one for young adult fiction will each receive a publishing contract with Penguin Books, including a $15,000 advance. Not too shabby! Submissions will be accepted starting January...
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And the Winner is...
Every year, a huge number of people join up with NaNoWriMo and write more in a month than they have in their entire life.
That, I think, is the true wonder of NaNoWriMo.
A few of those folks even write 50,000 words, and are declared winners, and that’s great too; to achieve a goal like that is fantastic, and really shows dedication.
But—and here’s what I’m really...
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Don't Jump the Gun: 10 Things To Do Before You...
Guest bloggers Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry are co-authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. They are also co-founders of The Book Doctors. Arielle is an agent-at-large at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency as well as the author of seven books. David is the best-selling author of 12 books, the last of which appeared on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book...
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Great Gatsby Print
Heads of State, who you may remember from 30 Covers, 30 Days, have created this amazing poster based on The Great Gatsby.
Chapter four of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby reads like a VIP guest list of the Jazz Age. Taking inspiration from those pages, this poster is comprised of the business cards and personal stationery of the movers and shakers that attended Gatsby’s...
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The YWP, circa 2005
We’re doing some post-NaNo “winter cleaning” around the OLL offices. One big job is pruning our shared documents database so we can easily back up all of our very important files.
While delving through the Young Writers Program archives, I came across this graphic featuring ideas for our logo, circa 2005. We’ve redesigned since then, but what a great blast from the past...
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Big, Fun, Scary Adventures 2011
Blobby’s getting a head start on his goal for 2011: increasing his overall “roar” strength.
It’s time for Big, Fun, Scary Adventures lists! We always say, if you can write a novel in a month, what else might you be able to do? So the entire staff has come up with lists of things that we hope to accomplish in 2011. We encourage you to come up with a list of your own and...
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Congratulations 2010 Donation Derby Winners!
In the Donation Derby, regions are assigned to leagues based on their size from last year. Each of the six leagues are assigned an animal: The Kodiak Bears, The Siberian Tigers, The Komodo Dragons, The Wolverines, The Tasmanian Devils, and The Badgers. And then we tally up the donations into two winning categories: “Total Donations” and “Increase in Average Donations Over Last...
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The Reader's Wardrobe
For months and months now I’ve been coveting a t-shirt from Out of Print Clothing —and that was before they began offering some pretty sweet-looking sweatshirts, too. But at $28 a pop, I can’t quite come up with a good enough excuse to buy one for myself. Still, if you like classic novels and you wear t-shirts (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t?), you should definitely check out the Out...
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Diddy and the Power of Ridiculousness
As I work on my Big, Fun, Scary list this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about ridiculousness. That is, the prospect of choosing an absurd, sky-high goal—the kind of thing that shouldn’t even be logistically possible. It’s an inspiring idea: to shoot for the unreasonable.
My thinking has been fortified by the actions of a guy named Chris Gethard. He’s not a household name by any means,...
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November's over, but why stop writing?
NaNoWriMo has been over for a week, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up writing daily. I find writing to be excellent stress-relief, and I would kinda like to sell a novel or two someday.
Now, I’m not talking NaNo-levels of production (though if you can keep up that pace, by all means do!). If you’re in school or working full-time or parenting or doing...
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WatchEver wonder what goes into a book cover design? John Gall, book cover designer extraordinaire and 30 Covers, 30 Days curator, gives us some insight!
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Reader's Fatigue: I, Claudius Vs. Anansi Boys
Last week I finished reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, a modern fantasy about the son of the spider god Anansi, and I read at a pretty average rate, but I burned through that thing in a matter of days. Yet for over a month before picking up Anansi Boys I was slogging through I, Claudius by Robert Graves, a novel written in the form of the autobiography of the Roman emperor Claudius. I don’t...
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The Night of Writing Dangerously
It is hard to explain the magic of the Night of Writing Dangerously. I shall give it my best effort, however, because I want all of you to come to the Night of Writing Dangerously next year, and also because my brain has not quite recovered from NaNoWriMo yet and I have a lot of pictures to use as a crutch for this post.
People who attend events in their regions are often startled to...
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30 Covers, 30 Days: The Roundup
It’s been a truly amazing month. John Gall, our fabulous 30 Covers, 30 Days lead designer, created a team of jaw-droppingly talented designers who turned out gorgeous work. Yes, I’m using a lot of strong adjectives, but I think they’re all merited.
Collage compiled by BridgetCarle The designers had some great plots and titles to work with, provided by our amazing participants....
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The Great NaNoWriMo Stats Party
Holy pants and shirts, Wrimos! What an event. I hope you enjoy reading this statsy analysis of NaNoWriMo 2010 as much as I enjoyed compiling it.
General Stats Round Up!
For NaNoWriMo main:
200,530 participants, up 20% from 2009’s total of 167,150.
We wrote a total of 2,872,682,109 words up 18% from 2009’s collective word count of 2,427,190,537.
This averaged out to 13,960 words...
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Wait, it's December?
Congratulations, everyone—we survived November! This year was my 6th NaNoWriMo and my 4th win, and as you can see from the Wordle depiction of my novel, I wrote character-based “literary fiction.”
My novel, The Brothers and Sisters of Interesting People, topped out at 102,055 words—mostly because I was a bit sick of it and couldn’t quite figure out a neat ending. Will I revise...