The Office of Letters and Light Blog

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

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?

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Camp NaNoWriMo?! What’s that?

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.

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The Age of Advice

Perhaps it is because we are in the middle of Script Frenzy and amazing industry-insider Cameos abound. Or because I am soliciting pep talks from beloved published authors (six have said “yes!”) to cheer on our November novelists this fall. Or because I am getting married in a few months, and am asking every friend, family member, delivery person, barista, neighbor, shrubber, and companion animal for their sagest relationship advice. Reasons aside, I am noticing a distinct uptick in the amount of interesting, varied, and uniformly valuable advice pouring into my skull on a day-to-day basis.

And that is just the solicited input! You can’t turn on the TV or open your mailbox or hop on the internet without being inundated with platitudes, suggestions, and admonitions for how to do something better, faster, longer, more mindfully, or with greater abandon.

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A ___________ of One’s Own

Y’all, I have been working on the ending of a chapter for a month now. The same ending. For a month! Part of the reason it’s dragging on for so long is that I’m falling down on the job of carving out time. Planning a wedding, trying to stay healthy, and running a household after a full day at work makes extra minutes tricky to come by. Well, at least without dinging sleep or hygiene.

But I also know what works for me in terms of my ideal creative environment, and constructing that perfect, maximally productive alchemy for “getting it done” doesn’t just happen at the drop of a hat.

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Bistr-OLL

Do you eat lunch at your desk? Unfortunately, I do. Or, I should say, did. I used to keep working right on through lunch, thus forgoing the 30 minutes of rest from eye-strain and brain-hurt-y thinking that’s so necessary for digestion and sanity. Eating at my desk was a bad habit only partially born of not having a better place to eat. Let me explain:

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NaNoWriMo 2011: The Participant Survey Results

Over 10,000 NaNoWriMo participants filled out our 2011 survey, sharing the details of their experience with us and offering input on what worked well and what wasn’t quite as attention-grabbing or successful.

Check out this quick-and-dirty breakdown of the results!

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Happy “Read Across America” Day!

If there’s anything we at the Office of Letters and Light love as much as writing, it’s reading. (And marmots.) So imagine our delight to learn that on this day, Dr. Seuss’ birthday, Random House and the National Education Association (NEA) celebrate Seuss’ legacy of exceptional children’s books by encouraging people  to pick up a book and read to a child.

What could be better?

Well, maybe encouraging people worldwide to pick up a book and read to a child. So that’s what we are doing today here at OLL: encouraging our participants around the world to share the love of books and reading with the nearest and/or dearest kidlet.

We also invite you to share your fondest reading memory from childhood here.

I’ll go first…

When I was a kid, I read to my dad instead of the other way around. I still have a photo documenting this nightly ritual, an inverse of the norm. I am reading animatedly from Matilda… and he is fast asleep under my pink striped duvet.

Your turn!

– Lindsey

Note: The amazingly awesome coffee mug pictured above belongs to Script Frenzy Program Director Sandra. I need that mug.

Who puts pep in your step?

It’s time for the great, grand pep talk poll! Has your favorite writer 1) written a novel, and 2) not yet contributed a pep talk? If so, they should totally write a pep talk for the 300,000 Wrimos who will be dashing out the rough draft of their novel this November!

I’ve asked the staff whose pep they’d love to receive (their top picks are below). Now it is your turn to tell us what novelists’ writing advice you’d most love to read.

Take a look at our pep talk archive (and the photos above!) to see who has already written a pep talk in the past. Then post your top picks in the comments below! We’ll do out best to get as many yes answers from your faves as we can.

Here are the staff’s picks:

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Writer Fuel: Salad

Today I’d like to ponder an oft-overlooked but rife-with-potential dish: the salad.

That’s right, I said it.

I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill, floppy iceberg lettuce and mealy tomato accompaniment. I’m talking about a glorious, multi-textured, ingredient-bonanza.

I have long respected the versatility of salads, and devote one night a week to making an epically large and experimental salad for dinner, and frequently bring a bag of ingredients to work for a custom lunch creation. What a mid-day treat!

Here are some of my favorites:

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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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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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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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