The Office of Letters and Light Blog

All You Need Is Love

Although some critique Valentine’s Day as a Hallmark card holiday (and, yes, I’ve said those words as a young lad, much to my romantic peril), it’s hard to argue with pausing in this crazy life to celebrate love—whether it’s loving your sweetheart, your granny, your pet toad, your novel, or the meter maid you yelled at last week for giving you a parking ticket.

The only thing the Office of Letters and Light loves more than writing is love itself—so we want to spread amorousness to all on Valentine’s Day in ways that are more fun than cheesy Hallmark cards (although we love many cheesy things, such as the fake roses in our office window).

Join us in a group hug:

On February 14, we’ll be talking about our favorite movie love scenes on Facebook, whether they make you cry, cringe, or guffaw. Scarlett O’Hara? John Cusack in Say Anything? I’ve been tearing up at Downton Abbey lately.

Download a snazzy NaNo or Script Frenzy heart to post as your profile photo on Twitter or Facebook.

 

     

Love your novel by learning how to pitch it. The Book Doctors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, are back for the second annual Pitchapalooza, February 1 to 29, for NaNoWriMo participants.

Flipping Valentine’s Day: Generosity Day

If you’re still a critic of Valentine’s Day, then there’s an alternative. Some creative folk (who probably did NaNo one year) have “rebooted” Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day—“one day of sharing love with everyone, of being generous to everyone, to see how it feels and to practice saying ‘Yes.’”

One way of saying “Yes” is to sign up for GoodSearch and designate the Office of Letters and Light as your charity. We have 6,100 supporters on GoodSearch, but we aim to reach 25,000 supporters by the end of 2012 so that we can improve our programs—for you!

Download the GoodSeach toolbar and with each Web search you’ll contribute money to OLL. And if you use GoodShop and GoodDining (say, to buy chocolates and roses or pens and paper), up to 6% of each purchase will go to support OLL (we’re sorry, but unfortunately many of the merchants and restaurants are only in the U.S.—they’re working on a more global presence).

Love. Love. Love. In whatever way you can. Even if it’s just writing a romantic scene.

– Grant

Donation Day Thank You!

Thank you so much to everyone who donated or bought something in the OLL store for Donation Day yesterday! In 24 hours, you contributed $51,645! As the parent nonprofit of NaNoWriMo, we’d think it a feat to reach 50,000 units of anything in a short amount of time. But raising that much money for NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program makes us absolutely ecstatic. And so, so grateful.

We had over 1,400 people donate yesterday. That’s the kind of grassroots support that most nonprofits would give their organizational eyeteeth for. To our amazing donors on Donation Day and throughout the year—we appreciate you so much, and we look forward to using your contribution to make the world a more inspiring place.

- Chris B.

Today is Donation Day! Hooray!

We’re a grassroots, participant-funded nonprofit. If you believe in what we do, please keep NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program going strong by making a donation. Our goal today is $100,000. Thank you so much for helping us give a creative boost to kids and adults around the world this fall!

You should come to the Night of Writing Dangerously.

There are a lot of things I really love about my job here at the Office of Letters and Light, but probably my favourite is everything to do with the Night of Writing Dangerously. This year will be my third as the Write-a-thon Cruise Director, and my fourth attending the event.

The trouble with our annual fundraising gala is it is very hard to describe in words or even pictures. While those who have attended can speak to the experience (and I hope they will here in the comments), the atmosphere of the event is hard to distill into a snappy blog post.

Still, nobody ever said I didn’t like a challenge, so I’ll give it a whirl. Why? Because I want every single one of you out there reading this blog post to stop for a moment and think, really think, about whether you could raise $250 for the Office of Letters and Light and get yourself to San Francisco on November 20.

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Help Write Blobby’s Bio!

Blobby just had his portrait taken for the Camp NaNoWriMo staff page. So the easy part’s done (what a photogenic gent he is!) and now it’s time to write the bio for this important member of our team. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

Blobby has been with OLL since he arrived on our doorstep in a cardboard box at the end of 2010. Since then, he has embodied all of the characteristics that we as a staff strive for. He is always great for a pep talk, a hug, or sharing a snack. When he’s not boosting the morale of everyone in the office, you’ll probably find him taking a sunset walk on the beach, sipping a cup of tea (he loves Irish Breakfast), or perfecting his latest break-dance moves.

We’ve asked Blobby for input, but he’s so humble that he just shifts from foot to foot and roars “Gumpo!”

What key information about Blobby is still missing? And what kind of activities might a short, round, green dinosaur enjoy at camp? We’ll incorporate your suggestions into the final staff page. We want to make this the best bio yet! (After all, it’s not everyday that we get to add such an esteemed dinosaur to our roster.)

From the Desk of Dan Duvall, Tech Manager

This week I was snooping around Dan’s desk looking for something delicious to eat when I came across a document entitled “Ditching Drupal and Moving to Rails,” stamped “Urgent” and “Highly Sensitive!”

 Unable to resist the lure of anything that has been stamped (keep me away from post offices and consulates, people!) I got reading, and realized that this was a document of grave importance.

After all, the guts half of this NaNoWriMo Camp and Guts Drive deals directly with this issue: new innards for NaNoWriMo.org in the form of Ruby on Rails!

Despite my anxiety over getting caught, I read on and came upon this:

Almost everything in Drupal is database bound. It uses the database for storing more than just the state of our application, it also stores its structure and logic. Upon every page request, this structure must be retrieved and reassembled before the request can be served. This is the crux of the matter as it leads to a level of database load that grows at a geometric rate with every major enhancement. Queries don’t just grow in numbers, which would be manageable through horizontal scaling, they grow in complexity, which leads to contention within a single database server that is not scalable.

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Chris A. and Sarah Debate Bears

Sarah: Just when we were starting to think there was nothing in the world that Chris A. and I disagreed on, we were saved from an abrupt end to our award-winning* blog debate series by the Camp and Guts Drive.

Not, you understand, because Chris and I disagree on the idea of donating to your favourite literary nonprofit, and helping launch Camp NaNoWriMo and build a new website for NaNoWriMo. We are both in favour of that and think you should all go and donate right now. (We’ll wait.)

No, the schism began when we saw the poster that $50+ donors will receive.

Why? I’ll tell you why.

Bears.

You’re probably thinking that because I’m Canadian, I’m pro-bear. But you, my blog-reading, donation-making friend, would be wrong. I am anti-bear. Down with bears!

Chris: Hi, Sarah! While I would love to employ all the written debate skills I possess in order to dissuade you from your (quite indefensible) point, I have decided to respond in pictures only.

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Camp ‘n’ Guts: What Does It All Mean?

Peanut butter, jelly. Bread, butter. Movies, popcorn. Matches made in heaven!

But when some folks hear “camp” and “guts,” the connection isn’t instantly obvious.

NaNoWriMo’s Camp and Guts Drive is a fundraiser to launch Camp NaNoWriMo this summer, and to rebuild NaNoWriMo.org on a new (and vastly better) platform this fall.

Not only will you get access to a great new noveling adventure at camp and a faster site and improved noveling experience this November…

You’ll also get some really sweet swag for donating!

Visit the Donation Station and feast your eyes on the fabulousness! (And don’t delay; quantities are limited and won’t be available again once they’ve sold out.)

Q&A with Blake Suarez, Camp NaNoWriMo Poster Designer

The NaNoWriMo Summer Fundraising Drive is coming early this year! Starting Wednesday, May 25, and running until we’re out of our limited-edition goodies, Wrimos will have a chance to launch our virtual novel-writing camp this summer, and fund new guts for the NaNoWriMo site so it can work better in the fall.

This is the most important fundraising drive we’ve done in a decade, and we hope you’ll chip in. All donors to the NaNoWriMo “Camp and Guts” fundraiser will get special, limited-edition goodies, including this amazing Camp NaNoWriMo mini-poster! The 11” by 17” masterpiece was designed by Blake Suarez. We chatted with Blake about the poster, and also put together some images of the poster’s evolution over the past month.

Blake, what’s your favorite part of the Camp NaNoWriMo poster?

I’m really digging the little fire and tents. When I first started the project I thought about recreating the approved sketch with just the different types of paper. I also wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so the first set of drafts were originally just the moon, mountains, and the fire and tents. A few trees and bears later though, I was happy to hear you all enjoyed it.

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Q&A with Wendy Bryan, NaNoWriMo bumper sticker artist

The NaNoWriMo Summer Fundraising Drive is coming early this year! Starting this Wednesday, and running until we’re out of our limited-edition goodies, Wrimos will have a chance to launch our virtual novel-writing camp this summer and fund new guts for the NaNoWriMo site so it can work better in the fall.

This is the most important fundraising drive we’ve done in a decade, and we hope you’ll chip in. All donors to the NaNoWriMo “Camp and Guts” fundraiser will get special, limited-edition goodies, including the first-ever NaNoWriMo bumper sticker! The 8.5” by 2.5” sticker features artwork by Wendy Bryan, of I Heart Guts. Wendy took a break from her gutsy illustration work to give us the scoop on the sticker.

Wendy, you designed the adorable heart on the NaNoWriMo bumper sticker. Do hearts really have mouths?

Yes, they do, but oddly enough organ mouths don’t show up well in X-rays and MRIs.

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KIMBIA stops by for a visit.

As if winning $5,000 in the KIMBIA-Guidestar contest weren’t enough, the cavalcade of awesomeness continued when KIMBIA’s president, Thon Morse, came by our office last week to congratulate us personally. Thon brought a bottle of chilled champagne and the 21^st-century version of the oversized donation check—the oversized online donation form. We posed for some photos and then took Thon next door to introduce him to the marvels of Sweet Adeline. Great guy. Great time.