The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Your Brain on NaNoWriMo

ollguest — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:45:34 -0700

We’ve heard many tales over the years from Wrimos who tap into realms of intuition and imagination as they write during NaNoWriMo. It turns out that there might be an actual change in our brains as we write with reckless abandon. Charles Limb, a doctor and musician who studies how creativity works in the brain suggests that turning off your “inner editor” opens up a flow of expression. Read on!

Tell us what you discovered when you studied the brain activity of improvisational jazz musicians?

Charles Limb: In our study, musicians played a tune they had memorized and then a tune they invented on the spot, and we observed their brain activity using brain-imaging techniques. With the shift to improvisation, a region of the brain associated with careful planning and self-censorship called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex became dormant, while parts of the brain connected to the senses—hearing, seeing, feeling—became especially lively.

Most interesting, a brain area linked to autobiographical storytelling also showed increased activity. When jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition—and turn on those that let self-expression flow. Essentially, a musician shuts down his inhibitions and lets his inner voice shine through.

I guess the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is what we unscientifically call “the inner editor.”

Limb: That’s not such a bad phrase. The real key is that it’s not just a single cluster of neurons that is that editor, but a whole region.

Do you think your findings about improvisational jazz could apply to improvising in writing as well?

Limb: I absolutely believe that the same thing could apply to writing. The idea that you can get into the zone of writing and that you can get into the zone with music is very analogous. Many, many writers, I’m sure, are surprised at what is coming out of their fingertips, or out of their head, or off their pen. As they write, there’s some sort of effortlessness that can take over when you’re really in the zone.

You’ve also studied rap improvisation. What did you discover about the act of writing, or creating?

Limb: When you go from reciting a memorized rap to improvising a freestyle rap, activity in the language area shoots way up in the brain, even though both tasks are language tasks. You might think that writing down something you’ve memorized is the greater, more complex task, but when you start writing down something you’re making up, your language areas in the brain go up.

We saw in our experiments that whenever you go from memorized to improvised creation, brain activity in your sensory areas goes up. Many people are not cognizant when this is taking place, however, because they’re so immersed in the zone that they forget where they are. They’re zoned out; they’re concentrating on their writing. All of a sudden they disappear into their own little cocoon.

Is this “trancelike” improvisational state accessible only by those with improvisational experience, or can amateurs reach the same place?

Limb: I firmly believe that amateurs can reach a state of flow, but that it is easier for experts, in any discipline. I think that is part of what training enables. But even a cursory observation of children engaged in simple art activities is evidence that a deep state of immersion can take place without any training at all.

Do you see any long-term cognitive benefits of regular improvisation—in any art form?

Limb: Every brain function study I’ve done of creativity has shown that the whole brain is engaged during creativity above-and-beyond what is required for regular functioning. Because of that engagement of the whole brain, it just extends to reason that creativity or improvisation engages the mind in a way that few other activities do.

Creativity in a nutshell is problem-solving taken out of context. I really do think that regular engagement of these types of behaviors is very important in terms of mental acuity. A well-developed brain is trained in many different ways from many different angles. It’s a real mistake to ignore the importance of the creative aspect, not to mention the fact that there is probably a major component of happiness and personal fulfillment that is granted through these kinds of things.

Do you think students should be taught improvisation in schools? Can creative behavior be learned?

Limb: Yes, I do believe they should be taught improvisation—it is a perfect model for problem solving. Creative thinking is a different form of thinking than the convergent thinking of most educational approaches, and an important one for lateral associations and insight. I think creative behavior can be learned, but that there are also different levels of intrinsic aptitude for specific disciplines—for example, music or painting.

Are you interested in possibly studying writing in the future?

Limb: I would be very up for the idea of studying improvisation in writers using brain-imaging techniques. I don’t currently have the funding to do so, but I would definitely be willing to participate or collaborate in such a study.

For more, watch Charles Limb’s TED talk on his research. And tell us what wild shenanigans go on in your brain-works during NaNoWriMo!

Image credit: Charles Limb.

Introduction and Recipe for One OLL Intern

ollintern — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:52:00 -0700

Hello, campers! I’m Ben, your new OLL intern, and summer camp counselor!

I’ve spent much of my life working at one summer camp or another, but this one may be the strangest. I’ve worked at space camp and adventure theater camp, but I’ve never worked at a camp where I only meet the campers online before! I’m thrilled to be here, and eager to help with Camp NaNo. Areas of my expertise include fireside storytelling, surviving camp food, avoiding dehydration, handling homesickness, and of course pranking other cabins.

Wondering what makes an OLL intern? Read on for the recipe below:

Recipe for One Letters and Light InternIngredients:

1/3 college student
1/3 aspiring novelist
1/3 camp counselor
2 lbs. curly hair
3 NaNo victories
1 storytelling obsession
27 vests
1 semi-complete novel draft (lightly toasted)
2 3/4 cups naive enthusiasm
1 jar of Nutella
2 batches of cookies

Preparation:

1. First, give the college student three years of linguistics and creative writing (education at Swarthmore College specifically is optional), but make sure that he hasn’t graduated yet.

2. The camp counselor should be sent back to work at the same camps he went to as a child—preferably things like space camp and improv theater camp. The stranger the better!

3. Give the novelist plenty of innocent idealism, and lots of good teachers and inspiring mentors. Make sure he works his way through at least three years of NaNo (plausibly preceded by one false start). You’ll know he’s ready once he’s finished a first novel draft and set it aside to work on an even better one.

4. Combine in a mixing bowl. Stir vigorously. At this point it’s important to keep the mixture disoriented, preferably by abruptly dropping him back in his hometown after three years away.

5. Once the mixture has reached a smooth consistency not unlike melted cheese, begin stirring in the enthusiasm and obsession. Stir until fully blended.

6. Cover the bowl in vests, and put it in a fridge for one week.

7. Remove from vests and fridge, and put it in a pot and bring to a low boil. Let simmer for one hour.

Garnish with Nutella. Will make and serve the cookies, if prepared properly. Serve hot. A single serving should last for one summer, full of mad dreams about growing up to be a novelist, and following in the footsteps of authors like Garth Nix, Jim Butcher, and Douglas Adams.

—Ben

"Bye Bye Bye" - N'Sync

capitanoll — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:01:10 -0700

Well, today is my last day as an intern here at Script Frenzy. When I think about it, it’s amazing how much my life has changed in the duration of just four months. There have been a lot of transitions: leaving my apartment to move back home, leaving UC Berkeley, and now leaving the Office of Letters and Light. However, I know all these endings will lead to new beginnings.

This internship not only exposed me to Pie-day Fridays, and to so many exciting people, but also to my love of aesthetic design. With the Adobe Suite, I’ve created many images that have been put to good use, and I really enjoy doing it. It made me realize that design is something I want to explore further career-wise, so thank you for letting me share that with you all on the blog, and through our site!

I also got to experience the background work of putting together such a large nonprofit event. And when I start writing my NaNoWriMo novel in November, I’ll know what’s going on behind the scenes!

As for my immediate future, I was accepted into a Creative Writing program over at SFSU. I’ll be starting there this August. And this summer I’ll be doing exciting, productive things like sleeping in, learning to ride a bike, thinking of getting a job, sitting on the park bench pictured above, and volunteering at the animal shelter!

Finally, I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the people here at the Office, and also all the participants of Script Frenzy. It is truly inspiring to see people get excited about writing! Keep on!

-Aliza

A Frenzied Festival of Plays

chrisangotti — Mon, 21 May 2012 10:30:20 -0700

Educator Cynthia Garcia doesn’t just teach noveling or scriptwriting to one class at her school in Fairmont, WV. She brings both NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy to the whole student body. We always love her enthusiasm and were excited to hear how her April went. Here’s what she told us about the school’s first ever “Frenzy Festival.”

April was pretty chaotic at our school. Between Easter break, spring break, standardized testing, and “weather days” (Fridays off of school to substitute for the snow days we had built into our calendar but didn’t use), we only had a handful of actual school days all month.

Two years ago, I might have figured April for a lost month, but that was before two NaNoWriMos and a Script Frenzy. I knew better. I put up my “Script Frenzy is Coming!” posters in March, sent for my classroom kit, and let the buzz begin.

When we did our first NaNoWriMo in November of 2010, we started with about a dozen sixth, seventh, and eighth graders; before the end of the month we had been joined by a handful of fifth graders and had piqued the curiosity of the whole school. Our first NaNoWriMo was such a roaring success that when Script Frenzy rolled around, we almost doubled our numbers and expanded our range down to third grade. NaNoWriMo 2011 saw another increase in numbers, and for Script Frenzy 2012, we had over 60 students in grades two through eight. What makes those numbers even more remarkable is that:

Sixty students is almost a third of our entire student body.
It’s not actually always the same students—so in fact, almost half of the school population has been involved.
None of the work we do is tied to a class—it’s all afterschool, during morning study hall, at lunch, or at home.

So after Script Frenzy 2012, I wanted to do something special to celebrate my students’ accomplishments. I knew most of them had never had a chance to act on a real stage, and I remembered how challenging it had been to showcase script excerpts in my classroom at our wrap party. I decided to hold an afterschool Frenzy Festival on the school stage the first Friday in May.

None of us had any idea what to expect. I’d encouraged students to sign up beforehand; I’d offered practice time afterschool; I’d given advice about how to excerpt a coherent section from a completed script—but we had been in Frenzy mode for so long that the freewheeling mentality took over. Seventh graders stacked bits of costumes at the back of the room; second graders handed me crumpled papers full of densely packed handwritten text to duplicate; sixth graders recruited their friends to come act in the crowd scenes.

On the day of the Festival, excitement and confusion were both running high. Once everyone had trooped to the gym and stacked shoes and bookbags in the bleachers, I took a final survey and scribbled a quick list of plays and casts. I had told parents they were welcome to attend but all the same I was a little horrified when many of them started showing up—after all, I knew students could expect sympathy and interest from their fellow Frenzy participants, but I was unsure about the tolerance of people who hadn’t bonded in adversity.

Astonishingly, it worked. Not that what we did was good theater, or even passable theater: the best of it was fun and silly, and the worst was kind of excruciating—not surprising, since I had put a pack of 7- to 14-year-olds on stage, given them an audience, and allowed them to do whatever they liked. There were lots of oddly choreographed ninja battles and confusing animal impersonations and unscripted dance numbers; actors kept entering and exiting at the wrong times and losing their places in the script; and the second-grade play about the magic dog looked like it might go on forever.

But it was okay. After a month of Script Frenzy, we had all learned that perfection is overrated and that the goofy, surprising journey of discovery is often the fun part.

Humble as it was, the First Annual Fairmont Catholic Elementary School Frenzy Festival was very much in the spirit of Script Frenzy: we had fun, we tried something new and challenging, we saw it through to the bitter end, and we supported each other. Those are all beautiful things, and I was glad and grateful we had an opportunity to experience them.

“I Sold My NaNoWriMo Novel!” A Q&A with Marissa Meyer

lindseygrant — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:31:02 -0700

We are thrilled to introduce Marissa Meyer, long-time Wrimo and YA fiction writer, who joins us to talk about her debut novel, Cinder, which came out in January from Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan.

Can you tell us a bit about Cinder?

Of course! Cinder is a retelling of the classic Cinderella story, but with a science-fiction twist. Our heroine, Cinder, is a sixteen-year-old cyborg, meaning she’s part-human and part-machine. In a world where cyborgs are considered second-class citizens, Cinder earns her keep in her stepmother’s household by working as a mechanic at the weekly market. Her reputation brings the handsome Prince Kai to her booth one day, and soon Cinder is caught in a political battle of wills between Earth and the Lunars—an evolved species of humans who live on the moon and have developed powers of mind-control and manipulation.

Cinder is the first of what will be a four-book series called The Lunar Chronicles, each of which is inspired by a different fairy tale. Book 2: Scarlet, based on Little Red Riding Hood, will be out in January.

What’s the connection between NaNoWriMo and Cinder?

The first three books in The Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress) all started life as NaNoWriMo novels. Actually, they were all drafted out during a single NaNoWriMo. It was 2008 and I had heard about a contest in which the Seattle-area writer who clocked in with the most words during November would win a walk-on role in an upcoming episode of Star Trek. Being both a geek and a chronic overachiever, I knew I had to give it a shot, so I ended up writing the drafts of three novels instead of one. My grand total was 150,011 words. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to win the contest (I came in third place!), but at least I finished with three novels that I was really excited about.

How did you come to find out about NaNoWriMo, and what convinced you to participate?

I wrote Sailor Moon fanfiction for many years, and early one December I decided to start posting my daily word count goals on my blog as a method for motivation. A friend commented that it was too bad I’d just missed NaNoWriMo, and I was like, NaNo-what-o? So she pointed me to your Web site and I immediately started looking forward to the following November when I could join in the festivities. (I would take part and finish two NaNos prior to the one in which I wrote Cinder.)

How complete was your book by the end of the event?

I’d finished the first draft, and then some. Cinder came in at around 70,000 words, the second novel (Scarlet) was right around 50,000, and then I’d gotten 30,000 haphazard words into Cress. However, all three of those novels have had to be completely scrapped and started over from scratch during revisions—which is just fine by me. I may not produce anything of quality during NaNoWriMo, but I always come away with a great roadmap.

What is your writing practice like? Do you tend to plot your writing in advance or do you prefer to fly by the seat of your pants?

These days, I’m a neurotic outliner. I’ll spend weeks, or even months, brainstorming and plotting and rearranging notecards and making character-arc charts and, just recently, playing around with the color-coding features in Scrivener. Then I start writing. Ironically, everything usually ends up changing about a third of the way through the draft and I have to revise my outline as much as I revise the actual book.

What lessons did you learn from revising Cinder that surprised you? Any revision regimens you swear by?

Although I had some experience revising stories during my fanfiction years, I wasn’t prepared for how much work would go into making something truly publishable. But I’d heard all the statistics about querying agents and going on submission and how difficult it is to get published, so I knew that I didn’t want to send Cinder into the world prematurely. It was important for me to know I’d written the best book I could in order to give it a good shot at success, which in the end took almost two entire rewrites, six or seven revision rounds (including being seen by eight beta readers), and countless polishing and editing drafts.

One revision tactic that’s worked for me is, once the plot is feeling solid, say after the second or third draft, I grade the suspense level of each chapter on a scale of 1 to 10. If there are any chapters beneath a 5 or a 6, I find a way to delete them or increase the tension. I also check that 8s and 9s are followed by calmer “reaction” scenes, or even a comedic interlude, so readers don’t feel frazzled from suspense overload. And of course, if the ultimate climax scene isn’t a 10, there’s a problem.

What was the process of shopping this book like?

After all that time spent polishing it, the submission process went surprisingly fast. I started querying in mid-August 2010, and two months later I had offers of representation from three agents, including the very first agent I’d queried, who I then signed with. She and I worked on our submission package for about two weeks and she sent it to publishers on a Friday afternoon. We had our first offer the following Monday, which happened to be November 1, exactly two years from the day I’d started writing Cinder. A week later, the series went to auction before we accepted the offer from Macmillan’s Feiwel & Friends. From first query to book deal was just under three months, and what a dizzying three months it was!

Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo this year?

I hope so! I couldn’t participate last year due to my first real deadline, but if all goes well, I’ll be joining in this year with a brand new novel. I have a few ideas for the “next project” that I’m excited for, so I’ll be working very hard over the summer to make sure I can take a break from The Lunar Chronicles to start something new. I can’t wait!

Later Guys!

ollintern — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:56:00 -0700

Today is my final day interning at the Office of Letters and Light, which is pretty nuts considering it feels like it was just last week that Tim asked me to write my introductory blog post. I can’t believe that Script Frenzy and all of its writing madness is already over, and that my time with OLL has come to an end. But despite the brevity of my internship, I’ve had a ton of fun working with the OLL staff, and I’ve gotten a taste of what it means to work at a nonprofit.

Since starting here I’ve been consistently blown away by the incredible passion and drive of the staff. Everyone at OLL works tirelessly to orchestrate the OLL programs and serve participants because they sincerely believe in the value of creative writing. I would never have guessed how much time went into organizing these virtual events; it’s truly impressive what these people (and you!) accomplish every year.

I’d like to thank everyone here at the Office of Letters and Light for the opportunity to work with and learn from them. Thank you for your unending patience when you realized how horrible I am with technology (aka Photoshop, iMovie, and anything involving HTML); now I can reformat pictures and upload movies like a champ.

And I want to thank all of you, our Frenzy-folk, for including me on the Script Frenzy team: it was very exciting to be a part of something so large, and what I believe is very important. Thank you for exposing me to scriptwriting. If it wasn’t for Script Frenzy, and your company and encouragement, I probably would have never attempted a screenplay.

The Office of Letters and Light is an awesome place and I’m going to miss it, but at least I know that I’ll always be able to stay in touch through the NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy community. So keep an eye for me in the forums; I’ll be around!

- Jessie

Didn't Finish the Script Frenzy Challenge? It's OK, We Tried

ollintern — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:59:37 -0700

In middle school, I had a science teacher who, if you didn’t turn in your homework for the day, would make you stand up in front of the whole class and give a reason why. Of course, science was never my strong point, so, at least once a week, I would have to stand and explain where my homework was. Now that I think about it, maybe this was my first brush with creating fiction.

I never went with the classic, “My dog ate it,” but did try to explain my lack of homework with excuses such as: “My soda exploded on it,” “I left it at the library,” or “My mom threw it away”. Those are believable, right?

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that excuses are for excruciatingly boring homework assignments, and maybe work—not for the mad joy of Script Frenzy. And because of that, I admit with a clear conscience that I didn’t finish my script this April. Unfortunately, I fell about sixty pages short.

I can sit here and deliver excuse after excuse for why I didn’t finish, but you know what? Script Frenzy isn’t homework—it’s an amazing and fun challenge that I’m glad I got to take part in. I’m proud of the carefully crafted pages that I have, and I don’t feel as though I have to explain myself. I tried, which is so much of what matters, right?

So if you weren’t able to fully complete the Script Frenzy challenge, hold your heads up high where I’m keeping mine. Whether you finished with ten or ninety-nine pages, you should be proud. Pat yourself on the back. Take yourself out for a milkshake (random, I know, but it sounds good!). You tried something. You were a part of something.

So whether you finished the challenge or not, how did (or how will) you celebrate? How many of you added to your scripts since April 30th?

- Aliza

Embrace the Geek

sarahjmackey — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:57:00 -0700

Last week, I went to the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo for the first time. It was, in fact, my first real “con” experience, at least of that scale. I’d contemplated going before, but when they announced a full reunion of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation I was finally sucked in.

It feels appropriate that it was TNG that got me to a con, since that show was really my first foray into geek culture. These days, I sort of dabble in the pool of full-fledged fan geekery; I don’t read comic books or dress up for movie premieres (except for the brown coat I wore to the opening night of Serenity), but I will get fanatically attached to certain TV shows and am pretty literate in internet geekery.The con itself was really fun, although it was absolutely mobbed with people and there were a lot of folks who had pretty lousy experiences thanks to the crowds. I was mostly in it for the panels, and I saw some great ones aside from the full TNG reunion - the Battlestar Galactica panel was so good that it made me completely reassess my feelings about how that show ended, and now I’m really dying to rewatch the whole thing.

Wil Wheaton’s panel was another highlight; he answered my question (about how TNG would have been different if it had been on in the age of the internet, given how much fandom has changed as a result of the web), and gave NaNoWriMo an off-handed endorsement. Someone else asked him what advice he’d give to people who want to write more, and since I am loud and prone to inappropriateness, I yelled out “Do NaNoWriMo!” He immediately responded with, “that’s actually not bad advice,” so I’m claiming this as an official celebrity endorsement.

But leaving aside the great and nerdy panels, what really struck me was the diversity of the crowds. Pretty much everyone there was some kind of geek or other, but every one of them was embracing their geekery. And it made me realise that, really, everyone is a geek about something if you look at it a certain way.

One of the definitions of geek is “a person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest.” A nerd can be defined as “an intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession.” Who isn’t devoted to any interests? A boring person, that’s who. Who doesn’t want to be an intelligent expert? Nobody I want to hang out with.

John Green’s got a great quote on the subject: “When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.’”

Maybe you’re a geek about an obscure science fiction show from the ’90s. Maybe you’re a geek about a sports team. (That one is much more mainstream acceptable, for reasons I’ve never really understood. I’m a pretty die-hard hockey fan, so how come that’s allowed to be cool but being a die-hard video game fan makes you a geek?) Maybe you’re a nerd about writing a 50,000 word novel every November. Whatever you’re a geek or a nerd about, I’m pretty confident in guaranteeing that there’s someone else out there who’s a geek about the same thing. (If you’re a nerd about writing a novel every November, I am 100% confident in guaranteeing this.)

Embrace your nerdy geekiness, my friends. Shout it from the rooftops. If someone tries to call you a geek or a nerd, tell them you refuse to apologize for your enthusiasm about the miracle of human consciousness. Go out into the world and find your like-minded geeky friends, and let’s see what we can do to make the world a happier, nerdier place.

There’s no better place to start than here. What are you geeky about?

-Sarah

(Photo of the TNG reunion by Flickr user Ricky Leong.)

Script Frenzy end-of-event stats: Hot off the press!

sandrasalas — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:27:47 -0700

The sixth year of the Frenzy had a combined total of 20,284 Frenzy adult and Young Writers Program scriptwriters who wrote 356,622 pages from all around the world. We had eleven fantastic Cameo writers, who shared tips about everything from adapting a feature script into a TV show to rewriting and selling a script.

I loved reviewing the Frenzy stats so much that I thought I’d share them with you, too! I’m going to make this a regular practice from here on out because digging into these numbers is just so juicy! I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

General Stats

For Script Frenzy main:

• 16,358 Frenzy participants.
• Wrote 312,363 pages.
• This averaged out to 19 pages per person.
• We had 1,832 winners, which gave us an 11% win rate.

For Script Frenzy’s Young Writers Program:

• 3,929 writers.
• Wrote 44,259 pages.
• This averaged out to 11 pages per person.

Website Traffic

In April, we had 266,084 visits, and 1,215,021 page views.

Top 50 Script Frenzy Cities

1. New York

2. London

3. Los Angeles

4. Toronto

5. India/China border

6. Chicago

7. Sydney

8. San Francisco

9. Seattle

10. Melbourne

11. Denver

12. Washington

13. Portland

14. Philadelphia

15. Vancouver

16. Austin

17. Houston

18. Helsinki

19. Madison

20. Eugene

21. Calgary

22. Berkeley

23. Montreal

24. Manchester

25. Phoenix

26. Albuquerque

27. Vienna

28. Paris

29. Dallas

30. San Antonio

31. Colorado Springs

32. Minneapolis

33. St Louis

34. Brisbane

35. Boston

36. Ottawa

37. Edmonton

38. Perth

39. San Diego

40. Bristol

41. Indianapolis

42. Dublin

43. San Jose

44. Columbus

45. Adelaide

46. Burbank

47. Salt Lake City

48. Nashville

49. Beaverton

50. Singapore

Top 50 Script Frenzy Countries

1. United States

2. United Kingdom

3. Canada

4. Australia

5. France

6. Germany

7. Netherlands

8. India

9. Mexico

10. Finland

11. New Zealand

12. Philippines

13. Austria

14. Ireland

15. Other

16. Spain

17. Sweden

18. South Africa

19. Belgium

20. Argentina

21. Portugal

22. Brazil

23. Singapore

24. Japan

25. Denmark

26. Malaysia

27. Switzerland

28. Norway

29. Italy

30. Russia

31. Turkey

32. Colombia

33. Venezuela

34. Indonesia

35. Hungary

36. South Korea

37. Israel

38. China

39. Poland

40. Peru

41. Romania

42. Morocco

43. United Arab Emirates

44. Pakistan

45. Hong Kong

46. Lithuania

47. Chile

48. Tunisia

49. Puerto Rico

50. Greece

That about wraps things up. Was this your first Frenzy? If so, how’d you do? Share your experience with us. If you’re a veteran Frenzier, what was it like this time around? Let us know, we want to hear from you.

Thank you for making the Frenzy such an amazing experience! I’m already looking forward to next year. I can’t wait.

Warmly,
Sandra

Map by Flickr user Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the BPL

Cutting Back on Online TV

ollintern — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:59:48 -0700

Since going off to college I haven’t had access to a television. At first, I thought it was going to be great: I figured I’d end up wasting less time being brainwashed by commercials and nonsense like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and instead spend my time doing something more positive (like going outside!). Unfortunately, that’s not how it went down. As soon as I went off to school, I discovered Hulu and Netflix’s Watch Instantly, a.k.a. the kryptonite of productivity.

It started out small. I used to visit Hulu once a week to catch up on 30 Rock, or Lost; it was when my friend told me that I could stream full-length movies and entire TV series on Netflix that things really got out of control. Before I knew it, I was watching all sorts of shows and movies online that I didn’t even care about. I began following mediocre series out of boredom. Now it’s gotten to the point where I can’t get dressed in the morning without watching The Daily Show or The Colbert Report online. I feel a need for constant passive entertainment.

Growing up I never had the problem of watching too much TV. Arguing with my sisters over whether we should watch the Disney channel, Nickelodeon, or Cartoon Network usually wore me out before I spent too much time sitting in front of the TV. But online programing is just too darn convenient. It’s too tempting to fill in a 25-minute study break with a commercial-free episode of Arrested Development or Parks and Recreation. Oh, the time I’ve wasted re-watching old episodes of The Office and waiting on my slow internet! You’d be appalled to know how long I’ve sat patiently staring at my screen waiting for an episode of Mad Men to buffer.

So I’ve decided to ease up on the over-stimulation. I’m going to stop re-watching old shows when I’m bored, and I’m going to try to bring down the number of shows that I follow to a solid two or three.

Have you gotten into the internet TV craze? What are your can’t miss shows?

- Jessie

Photo by Flickr user royalconstantinesociety

Camp NaNoWriMo?! What's that?

lindseygrant — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:01:12 -0700

What is Camp NaNoWriMo, you say? Well, I’ll tell you! Launched in 2011, Camp NaNoWriMo is a pared down, camp-themed, non-November version of the 50K-in-a-month NaNoWriMo noveling challenge.

For anyone out there who can’t possibly wait until November to write their next novel—or for whom November is not a noveling possibility—Camp NaNoWriMo provides that same hard deadline and abundance of encouragement to get you from “blank page” to “rough draft” in one month.

Camp NaNoWriMo 2012 is running two month-long sessions for you to bash out the rough draft of your novel(s): in June, and then in August. Pick a month—or participate in both—to write while paddling a virtual canoe or in a web-based cabin, novel next to an invisible bear while eating imaginary marshmallows, or in the middle of a purely fictitious sack race! You can do all this and more at campnanowrimo.org.

(Owing to some confusion over where in the world this magical Camp is located, I assure you that it is 100% web-bound. Camp NaNoWriMo’s address is nowhere else but 50,000 Internets Lane, the Internets, aka campnanowrimo.org. We wish it existed in tangible, life-sized Camp form too, but lumber for cabins and rubber for inner tubes is really expensive lately! Maybe one day.)

In summary:

-Head over to campnanowrimo.org

-Log in with your NaNoWriMo, or Script Frenzy username and password. (Or create an all-new user account if you don’t already have an existing one for any of our events.)

-Learn more about joining a cabin, getting sponsored, and all of Camp NaNoWriMo’s fun features.

-Plan for a June or August filled with noveling, Camp-staff pep talks, novel-tracking tools, web badges, winner rewards, and more bug and tent jokes than you can shake a perfectly sharpened hot dog stick at.

Tell your friends, grab your boots, and get ready to write! And be sure to comment below with the details of your summer noveling plan.

See you at the (100% website-bound and thus, non-hazardous) fire circle,

Lindsey

Unusual, Intriguing Novel Narration

chrisangotti — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:02:16 -0700

I just finished reading Hannah Pittard’s 2011 novel, The Fates Will Find Their Way. It’s a naturally intriguing story: a 16-year-old girl goes missing without a trace, and her suburban classmates obsessively speculate—in both the short and long term—about what may have happened to her.

Pittard’s choice of perspective makes this narrative even more absorbing. The entire book is told in the first-person plural: the collective voice of the boys who dreamily wonder about the girl’s fate.

We interrogated each other for information, eager to be the one to discover the truth. As it turned out, we’d all seen Nora the day before, but seen her in different places doing different things—we’d seen her at the swing sets, at the riverbank, in the shopping mall. We’d seen her making phone calls in the telephone booth outside the liquor store, inside the train station, behind the dollar store.

The result is wonderfully opaque. A plural perspective can never be definitively pinned down, and so the narrative drifts and bobs—as elusive and unreliable as the certainty of Nora’s circumstances.

What books have you read that make use of unusual perspective or narration? Have you tried this technique in your own novels? How did it work for you?

– Chris

A Contemporary Education.

ollintern — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:52:59 -0700

In the past few weeks of my internship, it has become more and more apparent to me that my formal literary education has guided me in one direction: towards death. That is, my bookshelves are lined with authors that are no longer capable of writing because, you guessed it, they’re all dead. From Woolf to Wilde to Joyce to the Brontes to Frances Burney, I like my books old, and my authors’ reputations set in stone.

While there are a few exceptions (I love Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, and a few others), my dedication to the books and authors from my English literature classes throughout college has led to some troubles in the Office. Whenever conversations lead to the question, “Shelby, who’s your favorite author? Who should we ask to write a NaNoWriMo pep talk?”, I give blank stares and consider busting out the old Ouija board (those would be some pretty tough authors to find contact information for).

With the Frenzy of April behind me, and the novel-writing of Camp a few weeks off, this seems to be the perfect time to round out my literary tastes with some post-modern, contemporary fiction. My real issue is this: there’s still so much older stuff out there that I haven’t gotten around to reading. How can I move on to the literary movements of today when I’m already behind on the literary movements that spanned the history of the written word?

But, alas, I’m feeling myself pulled toward the new millennium (finally), which brings me to you. Where should I start? Who should I read? What are your favorite books of the past few decades?

- Shelby

Photo by Flickr user MrOmega

I am here!

heatherdudley — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:02:00 -0700

You may already know me, even if you don’t think you do. I’m known colloquially as Dragonchilde, the all-seeing, all-knowing moderator of the NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy forums.

Dragonchilde is the handle I chose for myself way back on November 3, 2002. I started writing on November 4, and had over 16,000 words that first day! I hit 28K on November 6. I finished on November 20, 2002.

I also apparently invented NaNoWriYe. (Seriously, I had no idea.)

Since that fateful November, I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo every year. Some years I’ve won, others I’ve lost. My current win record is 50k in ten days. I don’t recommend that, by the way. I couldn’t use my right hand for a month thanks to carpal tunnel.

In 2003, I volunteered as an ML for the Macon, Georgia region, where I helped build a strong region of great writers, including the most precocious and fun young writer I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. She started college, this year. (You know you’re getting old when the people who started NaNoWriMo at 12 go to college!)

In 2007, I got the single most exciting phone call of my entire life. The Chris Baty, yes, the author of No Plot, No Problem, who created the event that had absorbed my life for nearly five years, called to offer me a job. See, I’d been volunteering as a moderator under the esteemed Cybele May, forum goddess extraordinaire, who had decided to retire from modding. Chris Baty wanted me, little old Dragonchilde, to be the new Forums Moderator for OLL!

To my credit, I didn’t scream. (I did after we hung up, though.) My answer then was the same as it has been every year since, when asked if I’d like to renew my contract: ”You couldn’t pay me to say no!”

Last month, I got another call, this time from Tavia Stewart-Streit, and she had a very-nearly-as-exciting question to ask me: “Would you like to be a full employee of the Office of Letters and Light?”

And thus, the Lead Forums Moderator was born. No longer to be merely Dragonchilde, adjunct contractor and East Coast representative of the Office of Letters and Light… no, now I am to be Heather Dudley, Lead Forums Moderator and wielder of great power!

As the great Uncle Ben once said, though: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

What does this mean to you? Well, strictly speaking, not much. I’ll still be the Woman on Deck in the forums. I’ll still be in the Eastern time zone, in my hometown in Georgia. I’ll still be there for you to ask questions of, and I’ll still be there to let you know when you’ve posted in the wrong forum. I’ll just be doing so under my real name. Dragonchilde will live on, as she always has, but you’ll see me around the forums under my full name: Heather Dudley.

Really, though, most of the change is behind the scenes. I pledge that I will continue to ensure the event forums on all of our websites are unique, friendly, and the stellar place they’ve always been for writers worldwide.

I will tell you one thing about all this, though: You never really stop squeeing that you got to beat Chris Baty in a word war in a Berkeley coffee shop during November.

So tell me, my friends, what’s your fondest memory of the NaNoWriMo forums?

Facing Graduation

ollintern — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:07:27 -0700

The past few weeks have been pretty wild for me: in addition to all the Script Frenzy craziness, I’ve been finishing up my bachelor’s degree and trying to envision what the rest of my life will look like. Last Thursday was my very last day of college classes (maybe forever). I’m still finishing up papers and preparing for my final exams so it hasn’t completely hit me yet, but when I do stop and think that I may never again stare creepily at a cute guy in class, or participate in an argument over the meaning of a phrase in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I don’t know whether to smile or throw up—right now I’m leaning towards barfing.

I’ve been a student my entire life, and it’s become a pivotal part of my identity. I also just straight-up enjoy learning and working with inspired professors and students; who wouldn’t? If I was certain what I wanted to do with my life I would pursue that career, or a higher degree, but I don’t so the only plan I have is to embark upon a vague soul searching mission—exciting, but also really scary. I might just lose it during my graduation ceremony and accost the head of the English department crying, “Please don’t make me leave, I don’t know anything else!”

But I have found some comfort in knowing that just because I’m not attending lectures or writing papers doesn’t mean I have to stop learning. Lately I’ve been blue when I think about all the classes I wanted to take but never got the chance to, the fact that I’m graduating without having read Ulysses (that’s an embarrassing one), and of all of the extracurriculars that I wish I’d tried but never got around to. Until two weeks ago I was really plagued by the feeling that I’m not well read enough or even generally intelligent enough to be classified as educated. I guess I figured I’d have more answers by now.

But during astronomer Alex Filippenko’s special lecture for graduating seniors, he cited a quote by Socrates that gave me great comfort: “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” Approaching education in this manner convinces me that my college experience has definitely been a success as I’ve fostered a genuine hunger for learning—what does it matter that I haven’t already read every single classic? Within the last four years I’ve transformed from someone that wants A’s to someone that wants to understand; I’m confident that I’ll be able to continue challenging myself once I’m on my own.

Graduating is still kind of a bummer, I’m going to miss Berkeley, and my life here, but leaving doesn’t mean I have to change completely.

Is anyone else graduating? For those of you who already have, do you miss school? How have you continued to learn independently?

- Jessie

Photo by Flickr user beejjorgensen

Alternatives to the Caffeine Crawl

chrisangotti — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:21:00 -0700

I’ve been pretty tired lately. Between Script Frenzy and some big personal projects, I’m working a lot, and thinking even more. Staying alert has necessitated a sizable influx of caffeine, and I’m stockpiling my supply like a fiend.

But today marked a decidedly low moment, as I actually reheated some coffee we brewed in the office last week. We’re talking at least four days old and cold as the rock at one of those weird ice cream mix-in places. Sad as it was, I needed the quick fix to get through my afternoon.

Help me, folks. I know that us Wrimos and Frenziers love our caffeine, but what other energizing wake-up methods did you make use of this past month? How do you non-chemically spur yourself on through a marathon writing session—or just a marathon work day?

Fruit Frenzy: An Analogy

ollintern — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:01:00 -0700

I’m a fan of a wonderful little iPhone game called “Fruit Ninja”. Have you heard of it? I’m sure the majority of you have, since it’s always ranked as one of the top 10 apps. Anyway, to get to the point (or to get to a point) I was playing the game today in “Arcade Mode”. It was amazing—I was slashing oranges, apples, and my favorite: watermelons. Then, almost out of nowhere, the highly anticipated yellow-and-red-striped banana appeared. I slashed it and a frenzy began—the “Fruit Frenzy”, that is.

Suddenly my small iPhone screen was being bombarded with fruit. Combo after combo, my score was growing until I surpassed my high score of 892. After a celebratory mental high-five to myself, I had an epiphany: “Fruit Ninja”, and its “Fruit Frenzy” could be used as an analogy for Script Frenzy.

Bear with me here. “Zen Mode” is equivalent to the first week or so of Script Frenzy. It’s relaxed, laid back—no bombs to interrupt your hard work in sight. Then we have “Classic Mode”, which can stand for those run-of-the-mill mid-month days. And finally, as we finish up this last week, we are are playing on “Arcade Mode”—in my opinion, the best mode.

In “Arcade Mode” there’s more pressure; and I’ve realized that pressure is something that I need in order to push me to write. Under pressure, I’ve found I can actually have what I now deem as “Fruit Frenzy” moments—where I’m able to spit out pages of writing as quickly as those digital pieces of fruit jump across the screen. Well probably not as quickly, but still.

So, that was my analogy, because analogies are fun. Do you have any Script Frenzy analogies, or anything that reminds you of Script Frenzy in everyday life? Do you have “Fruit Frenzy” writing moments?

Also, if you are a “Fruit Ninja” player, what’s your high score? Mine: 929!

- Aliza

Your Friendly Neighborhood Script Frenzy-Hero

capitanoll — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:01:17 -0700

Hillary, Script Frenzy ML for New Jersey here. OLL asked me to stop by and talk a little about why my area is so much cooler than… er… I mean, to talk about some of the things we’ve been doing here in the Garden State to keep the Screnzy magic alive throughout the whole month.

Script Frenzy is such a newer event than NaNoWriMo, and many areas (mine included), are really spread out, making it harder for MLs and participants both to feel like they have that same connection with their region, even if local events are less, well, local. I thought I’d share a few things we’ve been doing here in NJ to make our spread out community feel a little more closely knit.

Online write-ins and region vs. region word wars.

We’ve got a simple Java chat room and, while it’s open informally 24/7, we have scheduled online write-ins every Monday and Wednesday night. But, to keep it fresh, we decided to challenge our neighboring regions for some Wednesday Word Wars of the Week.

We invited Philly, NYC and Pennsylvania into our arena of battle and took them each on word-o a word-o over the last three weeks. The chance to beat our tri-state rivals really gave everyone that extra push to write more pages than ever before!

Our final online write-in of the year will be Monday (4/20) where will be writing from 8:30 PM EST until Screnzy ends at midnight and anyone is welcome to join us for this final word burst no matter what region you’re in.

We have amazing library partners.

Guys, libraries are awesome. The pictures in this post are from the Morris County Library’s yearly Script Frenzy display (they do a great NaNoWriMo one as well) and our newest partner, the Rockaway Library, not only donated an awesome private room for our kick-off party and weekly write-ins this year but also brought us cookies! Did I mention this room has a really random awesome fake fireplace? Because it does.

While a library event may not be local enough for everyone to attend, finding partners all over your region to host events or to just put up posters or displays is a great way to spread the sphere of welcome a little farther around the area.

(Remember: Anyone can set up library partnerships, not just MLs. Check out this page for more info.)

What cool stuff has been happening in your regions throughout the month to make everyone feel welcome to the Screnzy?

The Dream Team: A Q&A with Chris Baty and Jen Arzt

capitanoll — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:08:24 -0700

Way back in the day, when many of us were still young and naive, and all the cows in the world were calves, the Office of Letters and Light had an executive director by the name of Chris Baty, and a Script Frenzy program director moniker-ed Jen Arzt. These storied figures came together for this year’s Frenzy as one mega-writing-team, a scripting Megazord, if you will. Taking time from this meeting of their creative minds, Chris and Jen sent us this missive in which they interview each other about first kisses, wooden eyeballs, and the co-writing process so far:

Chris: This is the first time you’ve collaborated on a screenplay with someone. What important life lessons have you learned from working with me?

Jen: Coffee tastes better with a friend at your table.

Chris: Our screenplay is loosely based on an 1890s ghost story we made up involving a vanishing train and a seven-foot-tall murderer with a wooden eyeball. Neither of us knows anything about trains or wooden eyeballs. What were we thinking?

Jen: What do you mean? My eyeballs are wooden. You haven’t noticed? Kidding! They’re glass.

I think the thing about writing is to imagine the world you’re creating as you want it to be, rather than try to match it to how it may have actually been. All we need to do is convince the reader that this can happen in the way we say. Real life reality doesn’t matter if we sell our imagined reality right.

Chris: We’ve been getting together twice a week to write. You always have headphones in while we’re working. Are the headphones even plugged in to anything? What are you listening to over there?

Jen: Ha! They are plugged and whispering all the time while we write. In no particular order: Frightened Rabbit, Cory Branan, Josh Ritter, Damien Rice, Magnolia Sons, and “Anna Sun” by Walk the Moon.

Chris: As of today, we are about five days behind schedule. How are we going to get caught up?

Jen: Umm? Start listing to faster music. Maybe add in some speed metal? Okay, now you. Our screenplay’s heroes are 14 years old. What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you when you were 14?

Chris: Wow. Documenting the number of embarrassing things I did when I was a teenager would require a Lord of the Rings-length trilogy. One of my finer 14-year-old moments involved me writing a love poem and giving it, with great fanfare, to the first girl I ever kissed. She was too kind to point out the very obvious fact the poem consisted entirely of well-known Bob Dylan lyrics with her name tacked onto the end of key lines.

Jen: Our main female character has a traditionally male name. If you had a traditionally female name, what would it be?

Chris: My parents already gifted me with a gender-ambiguous middle name (Cass). This ensured plenty of character-building mockery on the playground when I was little. Maybe Hortense? Hortense Cass Baty. It’s got a nice ring, right?

Jen: If your life story were to be made into a movie, who would play you?

Chris: The first person who comes to mind is the Swedish Chef from the Muppets. If he weren’t available (or wanted too much money), Vin Diesel is probably the only other dramatic actor alive with the dynamic range necessary for the part.

Jen: What will we do to celebrate hitting 100 pages before May 1?

Chris: We currently have a scene where the teens in our movie gather in a diner to figure out what they’re going to do next. Ever since we’ve hatched that scene, I’ve been hungering to go to a diner. Maybe we could get a cheeseburger with a hundred candles in the bun?

Chris Baty founded National Novel Writing Month in 1999; two years later, Chris co-founded Script Frenzy. Since January 2012, Chris has been working as a full-time writer and speaker. Chris is the author of No Plot? No Problem! and the co-author of the Ready, Set, Novel workbook. His freelance writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Afar magazine, the Believer, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. His quest for the perfect cup of coffee is never-ending and will likely kill him someday.

Jennifer Arzt holds an MFA in Film, Television, and Recording Arts, and is a writer, director, and producer. Her short films have appeared in festivals around the country and have earned awards, including the Directors Guild of America Student Film Award. She’s worked on various projects of varying sizes, and was the Program Director for the nonprofit event Script Frenzy in Oakland, CA.

Ten Ways Poetry Can Improve Your Prose

ollguest — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:02:38 -0700

A few years ago, while plodding through a revision of my novel (revisions require the writer’s equivalent of heavy-duty hiking boots), I got bored by my writing. It was too literal, too realistic, too earnest, and too flat.

Most writers are all too familiar with this feeling after a red-eyed reading of a draft. I needed a way to literally jar my narrative sensibility. I needed jazz, punk rock, Jackson Pollock, Merce Cunningham, something.

Around this time, I read a quote by Emily Dickinson that remains among my favorite writing advice: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

I started reading poetry avidly and discovered that by focusing on the exquisite “slant” poetry offers, the “truth” I was trying to capture became more piquant, surprising, nuanced, playful, and meaningful to me.

So, in honor of National Poetry Month and Poem In Your Pocket Day, here are my 10 reasons prose writers should read—and hopefully write—poetry.

Mood: Many poems are almost incantations or prayers in the way they use techniques such as repetition and alliteration to establish atmosphere. Of the fiction writers who best use such techniques, I think most immediately of William Faulkner (who started out as a poet, and no, there’s no relation).

Mystery: In general, poetry is more focused on nuance, on the elusive gaps of life rather than on the objective connections that much prose is dedicated to. It’s easy for a prose writer to write toward linkages instead of writing toward the interludes where a different kind of tension resides.

Personification: Poetry gives life to inanimate objects in a way that fiction all too often doesn’t. Animating objects is a good exercise for any writer, but I think the applications for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism are endless.

Detail: Poets delight in specificity—in fact, you might say some poems’ narrative tension is formed around the drama of minutiae, forcing the reader to parse phrases as if reading with a microscope. As a writer who lacks Nabokov’s or Updike’s obsession with detail, poetry helps me pause and notice.

Sensory engagement: Poems are so often awash in sensory details, and details captured by all five senses, not just sight, which so many writers (including me!) can privilege. I cherish a good dose of synesthesia.

Brevity: Poetry is a craft of compression. Poems don’t have many pages to make a point, so their narratives tend to move through fragments rather than exposition. I love reading Kay Ryan’s miniatures or Basho’s haikus. Brevity inspires suspense.

Intensity: I think poems usually hit higher pitches than most prose, so fiction writers can benefit by studying how such intensity is created. I think of Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath. What words, line breaks, rhythms, etc., produced a poem’s steeped moment? How can such intensity be captured in prose?

Exploration: I’ve never heard of a poet who uses an outline. I imagine poets to be more like jazz musicians, who wend their way through riffs to create, taking risks in their word choice and line breaks, and conceiving in the moment (like many Wrimos!). Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara write as if following their pen on a playful romp.

The art of play: Poetry, especially free verse, can be more playful than prose, which finds itself hemmed in by paragraphs and sentence structure. If you want outright surreal wackiness—to the point that every word in a poem surprises—check out Dean Young’s Elegy on a Toy Piano (the title tells it all).

Attention to language: It’s a cliché to say that poets paint with words, but they do. Poets strive to write against cliché—scrutinizing and challenging each word—and perhaps even creating new words, a la E. E. Cummings.

So my question is, do you read poetry? If so, how does it influence your writing? Share in the comments below.

– Grant

The Office of Letters and Light is celebrating Poem In Your Pocket Day (I’m carrying Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”) with our good friends the National Writing Project, the New York Times Learning Network, and Figment. Check out their poetry resources for more:

Image by Josh Flores