The Office of Letters and Light Blog

Four Ways to Launch a Kick-Butt Writing Group

We couldn’t continue Now What? Months without picking the brains of our novel-writing community. The young writers of YWP already chimed in, and today, Sarah Mackey shares what our Municipal Liaisons have learned about writing groups over years of hosting write-ins during November:

So you want to start a writing group: Awesome! The thing is, there are a lot of different types. You may know right away what type you want to belong to, or you may be unsure. Let’s start by breaking down the options. Remember, every individual writing group will have their own little quirks and identity but we’re looking at the big picture!

Critique Groups

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Ask NaNoWriMo: To Plan or Not to Plan, and Missing Kitties

This month, twice a week, we’ll be offering advice from NaNoLand (read more in our initial blog post!). Our inaugural session includes questions about the benefits of planning, and writing while grieving… Require some wisdom of your own? Ask us here!

Dear NaNoWriMo, I am conflicted. Do I meticulously plot my novel? Do I fly by the seat of my pants? I hate planning, but I have a suspicion that my novel may come out more coherent if I do. What do you seasoned NaNo veterans think?

Yours in Writing, Overly Worried Novelist (OWN), Toronto, 0 words.

Dear Overly Worried Novelist,

NaNoWriMo is all about challenging yourself to try new things, isn’t it?  The age-old battle between plotters and pantsers is one that has raged quietly since 1999. 

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Crowdsourcing My Novel

Friends, I am concerned. Usually by this point in October, I have most of an outline knocked out, and a good handle on where my novel is going. I should have at least a dozen chapters summarized, a quick character sketch of at least three of my characters, and a general idea of the structure.

So far this year, I’ve got a page and a half of super basic ideas sketched out and…nothing else.

Now, for many of you, this would not be a big deal at all. But as I have established in the past, I am not a very spontaneous person, and if I don’t have an outline, NaNoWriMo is a complete disaster for me.

This wouldn’t be so stressful if NaNo were a little further away, but let’s face it, November is Coming. So I come to you, Wrimos, to beg your assistance.

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It’s NaReFriVoNaChaCoDa!

We’ve had such an incredible response from Wrimos to the Chase Community Giving contest, and we can’t thank you enough for your votes.

We need to kick things up a notch, though, if we want to break into that top 11 and be eligible for the $100,000 prize. And so we’re declaring today Recruit a Friend day. We’re asking our Wrimos to ask their friends and family to help us out.

Take a moment today to share what NaNoWriMo means to you, and why a vote is so important to our small organization. If everyone who has voted so far told two friends who then voted in turn, we would skyrocket into that top 11 and the associated $100,000.

What do you say? Can you find two friends to help us out? Share your NaNoWriMo story on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. Tell everyone you know about the contest and ask them to help an organization that means a lot to you.

Let’s call it National Recruit a Friend to Vote for NaNoWriMo in the Chase Contest Day. NaReFriVoNaChaCoDa just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? You can even sing a little song about it! “NaReFriVoNaChaCoDaExpealidocious!” Catchy, no? I mean, it’s no NaNoWriMo, but then, what is?

— Sarah

How NaNoWriMo changed my life.

We talk a lot about the ways NaNoWriMo changes your writing. We don’t talk quite as much about the ways NaNoWriMo changes your life.

This week, the Office of Letters and Light and NaNoWriMo are in the running for the Chase Community Giving contest, an annual event in which nonprofit organizations can win a share of a five million dollar prize. The top vote-getter receives $250,000, an amount of money that would have a profound impact on an organization as small as ours.

We’ve heard from awesome and passionate writers who tell us they want to support NaNoWriMo but don’t have the funds to do it quite yet. We love you for that. We need you now.

We’ve talked in a lot of places about what the money would do for us. I want to talk about why NaNoWriMo matters to me beyond what it does for my writing.

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A Real Life Book Swap, Inspired by Twitter

For whatever reason, Edmonton has had an incredibly lively and interactive Twitter community for years, and on any given day you’ll see a ton of activity on the hashtag for the city, #yeg (which is also our airport code), and the various sub-hashtags that #yeg spawned. (#yegfood talks about restaurants and farmers markets and such, #yegwx is for Edmonton weather—you name it, we’ve probably got a yeg hashtag for it.)

As a result, there’s a vibrant real-world component to Twitter here that I’m not sure exists on the same scale elsewhere. I’ve gone to all sorts of events that have been organized on Twitter, but earlier this week, I went to what might have been the coolest one. 

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A Battlestar of Thrones

I like to consider myself a pretty diverse reader, but there’s always been one big exception to that rule. I have never been a fan of the epic fantasy series that span tens-of-thousands of pages, and often come with many years of anxiety-inducing publication delays. (I spent many years worrying that J.K. Rowling was going to be assassinated before finishing Harry Potter. I don’t need more stress like that in my life.)

It’s not that I don’t like fantasy across the board; I just have limited patience for sprawling arcs with hundreds of characters with weird names to keep straight. More power to those of you who love them, but they weren’t for me. With all the buzz of late around Game of Thrones, though, I started to debate whether I should break my long-standing rule against watching movies or TV series before reading the books.

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Embrace the Geek

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.

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I Had an Onion On My Belt

It’s hard not to sound like an internet hipster when I talk about the web. I’ve been a part of message boards and online communities since 1998 or so, and I am a bit prone to rolling my eyes when someone tells me about some newfangled thing they’ve just discovered online that I’ve been doing for the past ten years.

But I had a recent, slightly horrifying realization: I am in danger of going from internet hipster to internet fuddy-duddy. This occurred to me the day I said something along the lines of, “I don’t know about this Tumblr business. What can it do that Twitter can’t?”

Replace Tumblr with, oh, 8-tracks and Twitter with records, and I’m a grouchy old lady wanting to know what’s wrong with how we did things in my day.

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Add Some Magic to Your Life

I’ve always been a library lover. Getting my first library card was a momentous occasion, although I proceeded to confuse my mother and the librarian by spending weeks selecting the most random assortment of books possible. (They eventually figured out that I would only pick books that were perfectly square. I wish I could remember my logic for that decision!)

I’ve moved on to books of all shapes and sizes, and the library has been a stalwart companion over the years. These days, I spend a lot of my time working with libraries through our Come Write In program. We partner with libraries all over the world to help give writers a space to find each other, and explore their imaginations, free of charge.

That’s a little bit of magic, I think. A building that offers you the whole world, for free. We’re going to keep working with librarians all over the world for Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo, and now Camp NaNoWriMo, too. And we’re going to keep going to libraries, too, because everyone needs a little magic in their lives sometimes. 

So celebrate National Library Week with us, and remember that you belong at your library. Stop by your local library for a little bit of magic, and maybe tell them about Come Write In while you’re there.

- Sarah

Photo by Flickr user duncan

I’m Having Trouble Adapting

As has been previously established on this very blog, I have not been terribly successful at Script Frenzy in the past. I am hoping to break that streak this year. I figured what I needed was a strong outline, since that definitely works for me in the noveling realm, but I lack the lead time that I usually need to create one of my in-depth outlines.

The solution, it would seem, is obvious: adapt one of my existing novels into a screenplay. I’ve got ten to choose from, after all (actually, that’s a lie—I’m fairly sure my first NaNoWriMo novel is lost to the ages, as it was written on an old computer that’s no longer around, and I wasn’t very organized about my digital files back then), and what’s a better, more thorough outline than a near-complete novel? The only thing lacking is an ending; of all my novels, only one has what you could legitimately call an end. Still, that’s fairly easily solved once I get to that point.

The next question, then, is which one to adapt. Do I choose the most complete story, which is also the most structured of my novels, but has a slightly confusing alternating point-of-view? The most cinematic story, with an easily-written logline and the most obvious mass appeal? Do I pick the one with the richest setting, to take advantage of the visual medium, or do I go for the one with the main character I like the best?

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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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